Top Internal Developer Platforms Compared for 2025

As organizations continue to shift left and double down on DevOps, the role of the internal developer platform (IDP) has never been more critical. With developers demanding speed and autonomy and platform teams seeking control, governance, and scale, IDPs are becoming the cornerstone of modern software delivery.

But with so many options on the market in 2025, we've put together this guide that compares 10 internal developer platforms, to help you discover the best solution for your team. Whether your aim is to scale quickly, optimize cloud costs, or foster developer autonomy, choosing the right IDP is crucial.

What is an internal developer platform (IDP)?

An IDP is a set of integrated tools, practices, and self-service capabilities that enable developers to deploy, manage, and monitor applications without depending on manual infrastructure processes. It abstracts away the complexity of infrastructure and provides a streamlined experience for software delivery.

Why do you need an internal developer platform?

Modern software development demands speed, scalability, and consistency. Managing infrastructure manually leads to delays, errors, and developer frustration. An IDP offers a standardized way for development teams to build, test, deploy, and operate applications with minimal friction, ensuring faster release cycles and enhanced developer productivity. An IDP provides:

• Developer autonomy: Enables developers to self-serve deployments and environments.
• Faster time-to-market: Automates manual processes, reducing release times.
• Improved security: Enforces policies, access controls, and governance frameworks.
• Enhanced scalability: Standardizes infrastructure management for easier scaling.
• Operational efficiency: Reduces cognitive load and platform maintenance burden.

What aspects should you consider when choosing an IDP?

Key aspects to evaluate:

• Built and managed as a product
• Reduce cognitive load for platform engineers and developers
• Depth and ease of developer self-service
• Integrated CI/CD and GitOps capabilities
• Comprehensive observability and security
• Security and governance built-in
• Full API lifecycle management
• Multicloud and hybrid ready
• Robust governance, automation, and extensibility
• Cloud cost optimization

Top 10 internal developer platforms for 2025

1. Choreo

Choreo is an AI-native internal developer platform as a service that enables software developers and platform engineers to design, deploy, and scale cloud native applications. Choreo delivers an all-in-one solution with CI/CD, API management, zero-trust security, observability, and AI-powered optimization–while offering out-of-the-box capabilities and the flexibility to integrate seamlessly with third-party services.

Choreo connects directly to Git repositories and automates the full CI/CD lifecycle, while offering advanced tooling for API management, workload orchestration, and zero-trust security.

What sets Choreo apart is its developer self-service capabilities backed by a curated platform engineering layer. Developers can deploy services with a few clicks, while platform teams retain control through policies, usage insights, and automation. With AI-powered features like cost optimization, scaling recommendations, and performance analytics, Choreo enables continuous improvement across the software lifecycle.

Key features:

• Unified platform for developers and platform teams
• Built-in CI/CD pipelines with customizable workflows
• Zero Trust security and role-based access controls
• Built-in observability with real-time logs, metrics, and tracing
• Cloud-agnostic deployment—managed or BYO Kubernetes
• Integrated marketplace of prebuilt connectors and integrations for faster development and reuse
• AI-powered cost optimization and resource right-sizing
• Full API management and governance with built-in gateway
• Autoscaling built-in

Best for: Organizations seeking a complete internal developer platform to accelerate application delivery, enforce governance, and improve operational efficiency across distributed teams.

2. Backstage

Backstage is an open-source developer portal framework that centralizes service catalogs, documentation, and workflows for managing microservices and internal tools. Its core software catalog tracks services, ownership, and metadata, complemented by reusable templates, built-in documentation, and integrations with tools like GitHub, Kubernetes, and Jenkins.

Key features:

• Centralized software catalog with ownership and metadata tracking
• Scaffolder for reusable, best-practice project templates
• TechDocs for generating documentation from code
• Plugin system for CI/CD, infrastructure, and monitoring integrations
• Fully customizable, open-source, and self-hosted

Best for:
Engineering teams building a personalized developer portal to streamline workflows, standardize service management, and enhance developer experience.

3. Port

Port is a customizable internal developer platform that helps teams quickly build tailored developer portals. Its composable software catalog uses flexible data models ("Blueprints") to define services, environments, and resources. Port provides self-service actions integrated with GitHub Actions, Terraform, and ArgoCD, along with scorecards to track service quality and compliance, effectively balancing developer autonomy and governance through a low-code/no-code interface.

Key features:

• Composable software catalog with customizable data models
• Self-service workflows for deployments and provisioning
• Integration with GitHub, ArgoCD, Terraform, and more
• Scorecards for enforcing engineering standards
• Low-code configuration via visual interface

Best for:
Platform teams building tailored portals that balance developer self-service with governance and visibility.

4. Humanitec

Humanitec is an internal developer platform that simplifies application delivery by automating infrastructure management and enabling developer self-service. Serving as a platform orchestrator, Humanitec dynamically provisions resources based on developer-defined requirements, significantly reducing manual infrastructure tasks. It provides seamless integration with Kubernetes, Terraform, cloud providers, and CI/CD pipelines, ensuring consistent management of environments and deployments. Humanitec offers intuitive interfaces (UI, CLI, API) for developers, while maintaining robust governance and operational control for platform teams.

Key features:

• Platform orchestration layer between devs and infra
• Dynamic configuration injection and resource provisioning
• Self-service deployments via UI, CLI, or API
• Integration with Kubernetes, Terraform, cloud providers, and CI/CD pipelines
• Policy enforcement, audit trails, and environment management

Best for:
Enterprise teams aiming for controlled, scalable deployments with automated dynamic infrastructure.

5. Harness

Harness is a modern software delivery platform that automates the entire CI/CD lifecycle, simplifying deployment, governance, and feature management. It uses AI-driven verification to enhance release reliability, supports progressive delivery strategies, and provides built-in tools for security testing and cloud cost optimization.

Key features:

• Visual, secure, and auditable CI/CD pipelines with built-in approvals and rollbacks
• AI-based deployment verification and anomaly detection
• Feature management with progressive rollouts
• Real-time insights and cost governance per service/team
• Built-in chaos engineering, security testing, and SLO tracking

Best for:
Enterprises and platform teams looking to automate and scale software delivery with built-in verification, governance, and cost control across the SDLC.

6. Qovery

Qovery is a developer-first internal developer platform that automates application deployment to cloud providers like AWS, GCP, and Azure. It connects directly with Git repositories to manage builds, deployments, and environment provisioning—abstracting away infrastructure complexity. It provides features like environment cloning, preview environments for pull requests, autoscaling, and integrated monitoring, empowering developers to deploy faster without needing deep DevOps or Kubernetes expertise.

Key Features:

• Git-based deployment to AWS, GCP, and Azure
• Environment cloning and pull request previews
• Infrastructure abstraction with autoscaling and networking
• CI-compatible deployment automation
• Basic monitoring and cost insights

Best for:
Developer teams who seek simple, automated cloud deployments without managing the underlying infrastructure directly.

7. Mia Platform

Mia-Platform is an enterprise internal developer platform that enables teams to build and manage cloud native applications using modular microservices. Through the Mia-Platform Console, developers can design APIs, configure services, and manage deployments via GitOps. With a built-in marketplace of reusable templates, it streamlines development and governance across Kubernetes environments.

Key features:

• Centralized developer portal and DevOps console
• Service and API catalog with GitOps integration
• Reusable microservice templates from a built-in marketplace
• Built-in API gateway, monitoring, and logging
• Kubernetes-native with full observability and governance support

Best for:
Organizations and digital platform teams building scalable, modular microservices applications with strong governance and reusability.

8. OpsLevel

OpsLevel is a centralized developer portal that provides a unified interface to manage services, track ownership, and monitor operational health. It offers deep visibility into service dependencies, maturity, and reliability by integrating with tools like GitHub, CI/CD systems, and observability platforms. Through scorecards and service catalogs, OpsLevel helps teams improve decision-making, enforce standards, and maintain quality across complex architectures.

Key features:

• Centralized software catalog
• Custom scorecards to measure service maturity and compliance
• Integrations with Git, CI/CD, on-call, and monitoring tools
• Easy onboarding with automated service discovery
• Dashboards and alerts for operational health

Best for:
Engineering organizations seeking to drive service ownership, track maturity, and improve operational excellence across teams.

9. Cortex

Cortex is an internal developer platform that gives engineering teams a unified view of services, ownership, and dependencies. It helps enforce standards and improve operational maturity through scorecards that track best practices like SLOs, incident readiness, and security. With integrations across GitHub, Datadog, PagerDuty, Kubernetes, and CI/CD tools, Cortex automates service insights and supports scalable service governance.

Key features:

• Unified service catalog with team ownership and metadata
• Scorecards to track service maturity and compliance
• Integration with CI/CD, monitoring, on-call, and IaC tools
• Dashboards for reliability, coverage, and operational metrics
• Flexible APIs and automation workflows

Best for:
Engineering teams looking to improve service visibility, enforce reliability standards, and foster a culture of accountability and ownership.

10. Atlassian Compass

Atlassian Compass is an extensible developer experience platform that helps teams organize and manage their distributed software architecture. It provides a centralized component catalog, helping engineering teams understand what's running in production, who owns it, and how it's performing. Compass brings together information from across your DevOps toolchain—CI/CD, incident management, monitoring, and documentation into one unified view. With scorecards, engineering leaders can define best practices and track service health and team maturity. Teams get real-time insights into reliability, security, and ownership gaps across their microservices and systems.

Key features:

• Centralized catalog of software components and team ownership
• Scorecards for defining and tracking best practices
• Integrations with CI/CD, on-call, monitoring, and security tools
• Real-time insights into service lifecycle and performance
• Native support for Atlassian ecosystem (Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket)

Best for:
Teams heavily invested in the Atlassian ecosystem seeking improved visibility, service governance, and operational consistency.

Navigating the IDP Landscape in 2025

The landscape of IDPs in 2025 offers a diverse range of solutions, each with unique strengths and focuses. This article explored 10 prominent internal developer platforms, highlighting their core functionality. From comprehensive, integrated platforms like Choreo to open source frameworks like Backstage and customizable portals like Port, there are many options to consider.

• Identify your core needs: What are the most pressing challenges your development and platform teams are facing? Understanding your primary pain points will help you prioritize features and evaluate vendors accordingly, whether it be developer autonomy, accelerated delivery cycles, cost optimization, or enhancing security and governance.
• Assess the depth of self-service: How critical is it for your developers to provision resources, deploy applications, and manage environments independently? Evaluate the self-service capabilities and ensure they align with the level of developer autonomy you require.
• Consider the developer experience: A successful internal developer platform should enhance developer productivity and satisfaction. Evaluate the user interface, ease of use, and the availability of documentation. A positive developer experience is key to ensuring the adoption and effectiveness of the platform.
• Think about scalability and maintainability: As your organization grows, your internal developer platform should be able to scale accordingly. Consider the platform's architecture, vendor support for scaling, and the effort required for ongoing maintenance and upgrades.
• Prioritize security and governance: How important are built-in security features, policy enforcement, and compliance management for your organization? Look for internal developer platforms that offer robust security controls, audit logging, and governance frameworks to ensure your software delivery processes adhere to your standards and regulations.
• Evaluate the vendor and community: For commercial IDPs, assess the vendor's experience, support offerings, and roadmap. For open-source solutions, consider the strength and activity of the community, the availability of documentation, and the level of self-sufficiency required.

Ultimately, the "best" IDP for your organization is the one that most effectively addresses your unique challenges, aligns with your existing technology ecosystem, and empowers your development and platform teams to deliver software efficiently and securely. By carefully evaluating your needs against the capabilities of the available IDPs, you can make an informed decision that will drive significant value for your organization in 2025 and beyond.