Alternatives
10 best Varnish alternatives
Tools that cover the same task as Varnish (infrastructure), ranked by how completely their pricing, free tier and API access are documented. Checked Oct 4, 2026.
- Varnish starts at
- Not listed
- Free plan
- Free plan
- API
- API unknown
- 01
Aiven
Aiven is a managed open-source data platform spanning PostgreSQL, Kafka, OpenSearch, ClickHouse, Grafana, and related services. It targets teams that want cloud-hosted databases and streaming infrastructure with transparent plan-based pricing across major hyperscalers.
Best for: Platform engineers who need managed OSS data services without operating their own Kubernetes database operators.
- 02
ngrok
ngrok is cloud networking infrastructure that routes and secures traffic to apps, APIs, and AI workloads on localhost, private networks, or production clusters. The official site positions it as an ingress platform with tunnels, a global edge, API gateway features, and Kubernetes ingress so developers can expose services safely without rebuilding networking for each environment.
Best for: Developers and platform teams that need secure public URLs, ingress, and traffic policy for local dev, webhooks, and production APIs.
- 03
AppVeyor
AppVeyor is a hosted CI/CD service for Windows, Linux, and macOS that connects to source control and runs builds on cloud VMs with admin access. It supports multi-stage deployments, self-hosted build agents, and parallel jobs for teams shipping cross-platform software.
Best for: Developers and release teams that need Windows-friendly CI/CD alongside Linux and macOS build agents.
- 04
Medplum
Medplum is an open-source healthcare developer platform for building and running modern clinical apps on FHIR-native infrastructure. It offers hosted cloud tiers and self-hosted options with bots, integrations, authentication, and compliance features aimed at digital health teams shipping production patient-facing software.
Best for: Healthcare engineering teams building FHIR-based apps who need an open-core platform with hosted or self-managed deployment paths.
- 05
Paperspace
Paperspace, now part of DigitalOcean, provides cloud GPUs and the Gradient platform to develop notebooks, train models, deploy inference endpoints, and run Core virtual desktops. It emphasizes fast paths from proof-of-concept notebooks to production ML deployments on NVIDIA hardware.
Best for: ML engineers, researchers, and startups who need on-demand GPU notebooks and deployment infrastructure without managing their own clusters.
- 06
Langfuse
Langfuse is an open-source LLM engineering platform for tracing, evaluating, and improving AI agents with collaborative debugging and metrics. Langfuse Cloud offers hosted Hobby, Core, and Pro tiers metered in observability units.
Best for: AI engineers who need open-source-friendly observability and eval workflows without building tooling in-house.
- 07
Mem0
Mem0 provides persistent memory infrastructure for AI agents and applications so context survives across sessions, users, and agents. The platform offers hosted plans with SDK integration plus open-source options for developers building production agents that need durable recall.
Best for: Agent builders and app teams that need hosted memory layers with defined add and retrieval quotas.
- 08
Shotpipe
Shotpipe is a hosted screenshot and Open Graph image API that renders PNG, JPEG, or PDF captures of any URL—including user-submitted pages—via signed requests and edge caching. The marketing site emphasizes SSRF-safe headless Chrome rendering, cached hits free of charge, and Stripe checkout to raise API key limits across free through agency quotas.
Best for: Developers and agencies that need dependable OG images or screenshots without operating their own browser clusters.
- 09
Thingsboard
ThingsBoard is an open-source IoT platform for device management, telemetry ingestion, dashboards, rule chains, and alarms across cloud or on-premises deployments. It offers ThingsBoard Cloud subscriptions, private cloud clusters, and downloadable Professional Edition licences for edge-to-cloud IoT products.
Best for: IoT product teams needing scalable telemetry pipelines, visualization, and multi-tenant device management.
- 10
Authgear
Authgear is an open-source customer and workforce identity platform from Skymakers. It delivers passkeys, passwordless OTP, SAML SSO, adaptive MFA, RBAC, and user management on Authgear Cloud, customer VPC, or self-hosted deployments with data sovereignty options.
Best for: Teams replacing legacy CIAM vendors who need every login method on every tier and portable user exports.
Varnish alternatives: common questions
What is the best free alternative to Varnish?
Aiven has an ongoing free plan. Pricing lists a Free plan at $0 per month with a single small VM for evaluation workloads. Free plans change, so check the vendor before relying on one.
What is the cheapest Varnish alternative?
Aiven has the lowest listed starting price at $5/mo.
Which Varnish alternatives have an API?
Aiven, ngrok, AppVeyor, Medplum, Paperspace mention API or developer access.