Comparison
Control Plane vs Qovery
Updated August 2026 4 min read
Choose Control Plane for a platform that spans clouds and on-prem as one virtual cloud, with identity, networking, VMs, scale-to-zero, and enterprise compliance built in. Choose Qovery to add developer-friendly deployment automation and preview environments to a cloud account you already operate. Short version: Qovery automates your cloud; Control Plane virtualizes it.
| At a glance | Control Plane | Qovery |
|---|---|---|
| Runs across clouds | ●●●●● | ●●●●● |
| Can run in your account | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Underlying cluster ops | Platform's job | Qovery-managed, in your account (yours with BYOK) |
| VM workloads | ✓ Yes | ✗ No |
| Compliance built in | PCI DSS L1, SOC 2, HIPAA | SOC 2 Type II; HIPAA BAA (Business+) |
Qovery and Control Plane both run workloads in your own cloud accounts, which makes them easy to confuse and quite different in practice. Qovery is a deployment layer: it automates environments, previews, and deploys on infrastructure that stays in an account you own. Control Plane is a cloud virtualization platform: it turns AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, and on-prem servers into one virtual cloud, and the infrastructure underneath stops being your problem.
The core difference: a layer on your cloud vs a cloud of your own
Qovery's pitch is developer experience on your own account: connect a repo, get environments and ephemeral previews, keep the cloud bill and the data where they already live. It is a strong answer for a team on one primary cloud that wants Heroku-style flow without leaving its account. Qovery provisions and upgrades the cluster for you; the account, its network posture, and the rest of the operational surface are still yours.
Control Plane goes a layer deeper. Workloads deploy to a Global Virtual Cloud that can span several providers and your own hardware at once, with one network model, mTLS between services, credential-free access to native cloud services through Universal Cloud Identity, full Linux and Windows VMs beside containers, and scale-to-zero with Capacity AI right-sizing. Compliance (PCI DSS Level 1, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, GDPR) comes with the platform rather than the to-do list.
Which one should you pick?
Choose Control Plane if...
- You need one platform across several clouds and on-prem, not automation on one account.
- You run VMs as well as containers, or regulated workloads with hard compliance requirements.
- You want networking, identity, and observability handled, not configured.
- Cost control matters: scale-to-zero and automatic right-sizing, billed on consumption.
Choose Qovery if...
- You live on one primary cloud and want better deploy flow inside it.
- Ephemeral preview environments per pull request are the headline feature you need.
- You want to keep operating your own account and simply automate the repetitive parts.
- Your compliance posture is already handled at the account level.
Control Plane vs Qovery, side by side
58 capabilities, scored from each vendor's public documentation with the same rules applied to both columns. Hover a capability for what it measures, or a verdict for the reason behind it.
| Capability | Control Plane | Qovery |
|---|---|---|
| Workload placement & topology | ||
| Can one logical environment span two different cloud providers at once? | YYes | NNo |
| Number of publicly published regions or locations | NNo | — |
| Can you attach your own Kubernetes cluster as a managed target? | YYes | YYes |
| Automatic failover of a running workload to another location | YYes | NNo |
| Fine-grained traffic steering across locations (priority, latency bias) | YYes | NNo |
| Getting to first deploy | ||
| Git push to a branch triggers build and deploy with no external CI | NNo | YYes |
| Built-in image builder — no Dockerfile required | YYes | YYes |
| Named framework guides (Next.js, Django, Rails, Laravel…) | PPartial | NNo |
| One-click template or app catalog | YYes | PPartial |
| Documented free tier | NNo | PPartial |
| Local development story (emulator, local run, tunnel) | PPartial | YYes |
| Migration in | ||
| Import from an existing platform (Heroku, compose, Kubernetes manifests) | YYes | PPartial |
| Scaling & efficiency | ||
| Metric-driven horizontal autoscaling | YYes | PPartial |
| Automatic vertical resizing of a running workload | YYes | NNo |
| Scale to zero with automatic wake | YYes | PPartial |
| Published cold-start or wake latency figures | NNo | NNo |
| Spot or preemptible instance support | PPartial | YYes |
| Networking & edge | ||
| First-party CDN or edge caching | NNo | NNo |
| First-party managed WAF | NNo | NNo |
| Egress control: restrict which destinations a workload may reach | YYes | NNo |
| Private connectivity into a customer VPC or on-prem network | YYes | NNo |
| Encrypted service-to-service networking as a platform default | YYes | PPartial |
| Application-layer request authentication at the edge | YYes | PPartial |
| Static IP addresses for inbound or outbound traffic | YYes | YYes |
| Storage & data services | ||
| Managed relational or key-value databases as a first-party product | NNo | YYes |
| Persistent volumes attachable to a scaled-out workload | YYes | PPartial |
| Automatic volume growth before capacity is exhausted | YYes | NNo |
| Backup and restore with scheduled retention | PPartial | PPartial |
| Static site hosting as a first-class product | NNo | NNo |
| First-class background jobs, queues and cron | PPartial | YYes |
| Identity & secrets | ||
| How a workload authenticates to external cloud services | YYes | PPartial |
| Secrets management with access control on retrieval | YYes | YYes |
| Role-based access control granularity | YYes | YYes |
| Audit trail of platform changes | YYes | PPartial |
| Third-party compliance certifications | YYes | PPartial |
| Multi-tenancy for the customer's own end customers | PPartial | NNo |
| Operations & observability | ||
| Metrics with a queryable interface | YYes | PPartial |
| Distributed tracing | YYes | NNo |
| Managed log export to third-party destinations | YYes | PPartial |
| Default log retention | YYes | YYes |
| Built-in alerting with notification channels | YYes | PPartial |
| Shell, file copy and port-forward into a running workload | YYes | YYes |
| Progressive delivery: weighted traffic between versions | YYes | NNo |
| Ephemeral preview environment per pull request | NNo | YYes |
| Automation & extensibility | ||
| First-party infrastructure-as-code provider (Terraform or equivalent) | YYes | YYes |
| Complete public API reference | YYes | YYes |
| MCP server for AI-agent operation of the platform | YYes | YYes |
| Machine-readable documentation (llms.txt, per-page markdown) | YYes | YYes |
| Ephemeral sandboxes for running untrusted or AI-generated code | YYes | NNo |
| Core product available as open source | NNo | PPartial |
| Specialized compute | ||
| Run full virtual machines, not just containers | YYes | NNo |
| Run GPU workloads alongside standard services | YYes | PPartial |
| Commercial terms | ||
| Published compute and memory unit prices | NNo | NNo |
| Published uptime SLA with a number | NNo | YYes |
| Documented path to migrate off the platform | PPartial | YYes |
| Public community channel | PPartial | YYes |
| Named reference customers published | PPartial | YYes |
| Vendor continuity risk signals | PPartial | PPartial |
Scored from public documentation as of August 2026. “No” means not documented, not necessarily absent; breadth is not a quality ranking, and specialists doing one thing well score narrow by design.
Which fits your scenario
Control Plane fits: a fintech spanning AWS and Azure with a PCI audit on the calendar. The workloads need specific accounts and regions, credential-free access to services in both clouds, and a paper trail an auditor will accept. That is platform work Qovery leaves with you and Control Plane ships as the product.
Qovery fits: a product team on AWS that wants previews and cleaner deploys. One cloud, containers, an ops setup that basically works, just too much friction per deploy. A layer that automates environments in the account you already run is the shortest path, and Qovery does it well.
Frequently asked questions
They overlap on running workloads in your own cloud account, but at different depths. Qovery automates deployments on infrastructure you operate; Control Plane virtualizes the infrastructure itself: clusters, networking, identity, and compliance become the platform's job, across clouds and on-prem at once.
Workloads and virtual clouds are created through the API, CLI, or Terraform, so CI can stand up and tear down per-branch environments, and scale-to-zero means idle previews cost nothing while they wait. Qovery's git-integrated preview flow is more turnkey; if that is the headline requirement, it is a fair reason to pick Qovery.
No. You never operate a cluster, patch a node, or write manifests, including when workloads run in your own accounts or on your own servers. Qovery-managed clusters also spare you upgrades; the structural difference is that Control Plane does it across clouds and on-prem as one layer, with networking, identity, and compliance included.
A single primary cloud, container-only workloads, compliance already handled, and the pain concentrated in deploy flow rather than infrastructure. In that shape, an automation layer is the right size of solution.
Need more than deploy automation?
Compose AWS, GCP, Azure, and your own servers into one virtual cloud with identity, networking, compliance, and scale-to-zero included. Test it on one real workload.