gastropod vs. Cloudsmith
This page compares gastropod with Cloudsmith. The two are similar in spirit; the differences surface in deployment flexibility, artifact intelligence, and audit.
at a glance
| gastropod | Cloudsmith | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Artifact registry with built-in provenance verification, SBOM, and audit, as one product, cloud or self-hosted | Cloud-native SaaS artifact registry with broad format support |
| Best for | Teams that want a registry and supply-chain intelligence together, on every tier, with the option to self-host | Teams that want a pure-SaaS registry with wide format coverage |
| Pricing model | Published, tiered rates — Pro $50/mo, Business $450/mo, custom enterprise; every feature on every tier; separate storage and egress meters with a hard-cap option | Usage-based: Core $0 with hard limits, Pro $149/mo, Ultra/Enterprise custom; on-demand overage at $1.50/GB on both storage and delivery |
| Deployment | SaaS or self-hosted (Enterprise tier) | SaaS only |
why teams pick gastropod over Cloudsmith
- You can run it where you need it. Cloudsmith is SaaS only. Gastropod runs as fully-managed cloud or self-hosted from the same binary, so environments that require the registry to live inside your own infrastructure, which a pure-SaaS registry structurally can't serve, are on the table.
- Verification, not just scanning. Gastropod checks upstream signatures and checksum databases (Go's h1 sums, npm signatures, Sigstore, signed apt) before serving an artifact, catching identity and provenance mismatches at intake. Scanning for known-bad content is a different, complementary guarantee; gastropod does both, ingesting your existing scanners for the second.
- Every pull is attributed, on every tier. The per-pull audit spine, who pulled what, when, and from where, exportable, is core to gastropod and present on the base tier rather than gated to a higher plan. When an incident hits, "who pulled it and where did it go" is a ten-minute answer.
- Your existing scanners' findings compound. Gastropod ingests results from Trivy, Grype, Snyk, Anchore, and others, then correlates and pins them to an artifact's identity, so a finding applies everywhere that exact digest appears, instead of re-scanning the same package across every application.
- Findings can cross organizational lines. Gastropod's enterprise tier federates with trusted circles while honoring privacy and embargo windows, built for ISACs, sector groups, and supplier networks that want to privately share vulnerability intelligence.
- The bill is predictable, and you can cap it. Both products meter usage, but Cloudsmith bills on-demand overage at $1.50/GB on both storage and delivery, which can multiply a bill when CI pulls run heavy. Gastropod publishes separate storage and egress rates and lets you set a per-resource hard cap, so a resource simply stops at its allowance instead of running up an overage.
capability comparison
| Capability | gastropod | Cloudsmith |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment options | SaaS or self-hosted | SaaS only, no self-hosted option |
| Provenance verified at intake | Go h1 sums, npm signatures, Sigstore, signed apt, before an artifact is served | Scanning-centric; upstream signature and provenance verification isn't the model |
| Per-pull attribution + audit | Every pull attributed; exportable audit log, every tier | Audit logging present; availability and retention vary by tier |
| Bring-your-own-scanner ingest | Trivy, Grype, Snyk, Anchore; CycloneDX, OpenVEX, JSON | Cloudsmith's own scanning; not a bring-your-own-findings model |
| Blast radius / transitive impact | Direct & transitive graph, every tier | Not a focus |
| PURL identity + where-seen history | First-class; intelligence follows the digest everywhere | Per-repository model |
| SBOM | CycloneDX on demand, every tier | SBOM and security features vary by tier |
| Cross-org findings sharing | Federation: trusted circles, embargoed findings | No documented equivalent |
| Package ecosystems | Go modules, npm, Debian/Ubuntu, OCI containers, Python (PyPI), Maven & Gradle, Alpine (apk), RHEL family (rpm), .NET (NuGet), Ruby (RubyGems), Helm charts, plus source proxies | 28+ formats (Cloudsmith's figure) |
| Pricing transparency | Full rate card ($50/mo Pro, $450/mo Business); separate storage & egress meters at $0.90/GiB-mo and $0.75/GiB on Pro; hard-cap option | Usage-based; $1.50/GB overage on both storage and delivery |
Based on public Cloudsmith documentation and pricing pages as of July 2026. Cloudsmith's tier contents change; verify at cloudsmith.com/pricing before relying on this table.
the pricing difference
Gastropod includes every feature on every tier — see published rates for Pro, Business, and Enterprise. Pro is $50/month with 25 GiB storage and 150 GiB/mo egress included, then $0.90/GiB-mo storage and $0.75/GiB egress beyond that. Business is $450/month with 125 GiB storage, 1 TiB/mo egress, lower rates ($0.75/GiB-mo storage, $0.60/GiB egress), and a 99.9% SLA; Enterprise is committed-use. Any resource can be hard-capped instead of billed for overage; annual billing is 15% off; open source runs free.
Cloudsmith's Core tier is free with hard limits: 500 MB storage, 1 GB delivery, no overage. Pro is $149/month with 5 GB storage and 25 GB delivery, then on-demand overage at $1.50/GB on both metrics; Ultra and Enterprise are custom. The overage rate is the thing to model: teams with heavy CI/CD download volume can see the bill climb well past the base subscription, since every outbound gigabyte past the allowance bills at the same $1.50 whether it's storage or delivery. Gastropod's Pro tier is $50/month with 25 GiB storage and 150 GiB/mo egress included, and meters the two separately beyond that — $0.90/GiB-mo storage, $0.75/GiB egress, either one cappable. If predictable, cappable spend matters, and especially if self-hosting is ever a requirement, that's the comparison.
migrating from Cloudsmith
Both products speak the standard protocols your package managers already use, so they can run side by side: point one team, one ecosystem, or one CI pipeline at gastropod and compare before you commit.
FAQ
can I self-host gastropod? Cloudsmith is SaaS-only.
Yes. Gastropod's self-hosted deployment is an Enterprise-tier option that runs inside your own infrastructure. That's the biggest structural difference between the two: Cloudsmith runs only as a hosted service.
does gastropod scan for vulnerabilities the way Cloudsmith does?
Gastropod takes a broader approach. It verifies upstream provenance at intake, correlates OSV advisories against every package version, and ingests findings from scanners you already run — Trivy, Grype, Snyk, Anchore, or your own. Rather than being your one scanner, gastropod makes the scanners you already run more useful by pinning their findings to artifact identity so they're reusable everywhere that artifact appears.
how does gastropod pricing compare to Cloudsmith pricing?
Both meter usage. Gastropod publishes a full rate card — Pro at $50/month, Business at $450/month, and custom Enterprise — with every feature on every tier, separate storage and egress meters ($0.90/GiB-mo and $0.75/GiB on Pro), and a per-resource hard-cap option; see gastropod.io/pricing for current rates. Cloudsmith is usage-based with a free Core tier and a $149/month Pro tier, then on-demand overage at $1.50/GB on both storage and delivery. Current Cloudsmith pricing is at cloudsmith.com/pricing.
is gastropod a drop-in replacement for Cloudsmith?
For the ecosystems gastropod supports natively — Go modules, npm, Debian/Ubuntu, OCI containers, Python (PyPI), Maven & Gradle, Alpine (apk), RHEL family (rpm), .NET (NuGet), Ruby (RubyGems), and Helm charts — yes: standard clients point at gastropod with a one-line config change. Cloudsmith supports more formats today; a format gastropod doesn't have yet can be requested, and new connectors typically ship in days, not quarters.
can gastropod and Cloudsmith run at the same time?
Yes, and doing so is a good way to evaluate a switch. Point a single ecosystem or team at gastropod while Cloudsmith keeps serving everything else; both use the package managers' native protocols, so build tooling doesn't change twice.
See the full product overview, pricing, security, and federation pages.
Comparison based on public vendor documentation and pricing pages as of July 2026. Cloudsmith is a trademark of Cloudsmith Ltd. Gastropod is not affiliated with Cloudsmith. Product capabilities and pricing change; verify details against Cloudsmith's current documentation before making decisions.