Two good tools, built for different scopes
Both run pipelines natively on Kubernetes. The real question is whether you want primitives to build your own platform on, or a platform that is already built.
Tekton is an open-source, Kubernetes-native CI/CD framework under the CD Foundation. Tasks and Pipelines run as pods in your cluster, Triggers start them from events, and Tekton Chains signs builds and records provenance for supply-chain security.
It is a framework by design. The Dashboard is basic, so most teams build their own conventions, secrets handling, approvals, promotion and developer UX on top, then host and upgrade it all in-cluster.
- Kubernetes-native, CRD-driven pipelines
- Strong supply-chain story with Chains
- You build the UX and conventions
- No environments or provisioning
Atmosly is an internal developer platform for Kubernetes. Pipelines come ready: source, build, test, deploy, verify and promote, in a visual editor or YAML on the same engine, GitOps-native with approvals and one-click rollback.
Around the pipeline it provisions clusters and cloud resources through guardrails, gives developers preview environments, and keeps one audit trail. It is fully managed, and the SquareOps services team can implement and run it for you.
- Ready-made pipelines, visual or YAML
- Approvals, promotion and rollback built in
- Preview environments and governed provisioning
- Fully managed, nothing to self-host
Tekton gives you parts. Atmosly gives you the platform.
Instead of building dashboards, approval flows and environment tooling on top of Tekton, Atmosly delivers them on one control plane, with one permissions model and one audit trail.
Pipelines you configure, not a platform you write
With Tekton you author Tasks, wire Triggers and build the conventions every team follows. Atmosly ships the stages ready to use, from webhook to production, in a visual editor or as YAML.
- Docker, Buildpacks or Kaniko builds
- Rolling, blue-green and canary deploys
- Multi-stage promotion with approvals
Environments developers get on their own
Tekton can run a deploy, but an environment per PR, with data, secrets and policies, is still a project. Atmosly gives every PR a governed environment inherited from prod that expires on merge.
- Ready in about 2 minutes, zero tickets
- Clone a full stack for a tenant or region
- 200+ vetted Helm charts with your defaults
One permissions model and one audit trail
Tekton inherits Kubernetes RBAC and leaves the rest to you. Atmosly adds roles per team, environment and action, SAML SSO, an audited web terminal and one trail of every provision, deploy, approval and rollback.
- Fine-grained RBAC and SAML SSO
- Audited, scoped kubectl from the browser
- Guardrail policies on installs and provisioning
Tekton vs Atmosly, capability by capability
We kept Tekton's genuine wins in the table. They're marked so you can see them at a glance.
Tekton's wins are real: composable primitives and an open license, and Chains adds signed provenance. Atmosly's case is a finished platform that you don't have to build or run.
Which one is right for your team?
It depends on scope, and on who you want running the platform.
- You want low-level, composable pipeline primitives
- You are building your own platform on Kubernetes
- Signed provenance with Tekton Chains is a requirement
- You have engineers to own the UX and operations
- Free and open source is a hard requirement
- You want pipelines that work out of the box
- Developers need preview environments without tickets
- Provisioning should run through guardrails
- One RBAC model and audit trail across clusters matter
- You'd like a partner (SquareOps) to implement and run it
If you are building your own platform and want composable pipeline primitives, Tekton is a great foundation. If you'd rather have the finished platform, with pipelines, provisioning and environments managed for you, that's Atmosly.
Connect a cluster freeFrom Tekton to Atmosly in an afternoon
No big-bang migration. Connect read-only, move one service off its Tekton pipeline, and retire custom Tasks as you go.
Rather not do it yourself? The SquareOps services team can run the migration and day-2 operations for you.
Managed Kubernetes servicesWhat teams comparing Tekton ask
Not covered? An engineer replies within one business day.
consult@squareops.comTekton is an open-source framework of Kubernetes-native pipeline building blocks that you assemble into a CI/CD system. Atmosly is a finished internal developer platform with pipelines, GitOps deployment, provisioning, preview environments and governance built in and fully managed.
Yes. Tekton and Atmosly can run on the same clusters, so you can move services to Atmosly pipelines one at a time and keep Tekton where it still fits.
The pieces you build around Tekton: custom Tasks for common stages, trigger plumbing, approval and promotion flows, dashboards, and the upgrades of the framework itself.
Partly. Atmosly's CI/CD pipelines include scan steps such as Trivy image scanning, secret detection and custom scripts, so those checks run as part of the build. Signed SLSA provenance is a different job, and Tekton Chains remains a strong option you can keep. Cluster-level vulnerability scanning and compliance posture are Verity, a separate SquareOps product.
Not very, and it is incremental. Connect a cluster read-only, turn one running service into an Atmosly blueprint and pipeline, and retire its Tekton pipeline once it ships. The SquareOps services team can run the migration for you.
Any conformant Kubernetes cluster: EKS, GKE, AKS or self-managed, public or private, including on-prem and bare-metal. You import the cluster you already run, read-only, in minutes.
No. It runs on your own clusters on standard Kubernetes, Helm and Git, so what you build stays portable.
It is fully managed and agent-based. There is no control plane for you to host, patch or upgrade, and SquareOps can run day-2 operations for you. Enterprise customers can self-host the control plane in their own VPC if they need to.