/technology/vs-insforge/ · The comparison, with sources
The closest peer, row by row.
InsForge is the closest peer in this comparison: open source under Apache-2.0, built by Insforge Inc., with a hosted service running today at insforge.dev. The repository was created in July 2025, reached v2.3.4 in October 2026, and stands at 13,144 stars, checked 2026-10-18. It is Postgres per project with auto-generated REST and realtime, and it is genuinely agent-native: an OpenAI-compatible model gateway with per-project quotas, and an MCP server that exposes InsForge’s operations as tools any MCP-compatible agent can call. Harness is a compiled backend with a database per venture, and the managed layer is still on the roadmap. Both columns below are meant to survive an InsForge engineer reading them.
The same comparison, row by row
Thirteen rows and the same Cratefield column on every page, each competitor cell cited to the competitor’s own documentation.
Shippingin the repo Designedpublic issues, unbuilt Plannednamed, unspecified
| Capability | InsForge (per its docs) | Cratefield Harness |
|---|---|---|
| Database | Full PostgreSQL 15 per project, with pgvector, and REST auto-generated over the schema through PostgREST v12; the shipped docker-compose stack pins those component versions. docs docs | Cloudflare D1 (SQLite) per backend; 10 GB per database, single-threaded. Or real Postgres through the same port, on the native runtime Shipping |
| Multi-tenant isolation | The project is the hosted unit: “each branch runs on its own EC2 instance, restored from the parent at create time,” and row-level security enforces app-level access inside the database. Self-hosted, the boundary is one docker-compose stack per deployment. docs docs docs | One database per tenant; no shared tables, no RLS. Shipping |
| Where it runs | Hosted at insforge.dev today, or self-hosted anywhere: one docker-compose stack of four services — postgres, postgrest, insforge, deno — on any VM, with one-click deploys on Railway, Zeabur, Sealos, RepoCloud and ZopDay. docs docs | Managed by us, in your infrastructure account or ours — two modes Planned |
| Composition | A runtime platform: Deno edge functions, plus container compute in private preview — “no persistent volumes yet” and one instance per service. There is no compile-time composition step. docs | Rust crates listed in Cargo.toml, compiled into one binary Shipping |
| Auth | Email and password, magic link, one-time code, OAuth with Google, GitHub and Apple, and any OIDC provider; InsForge can also act as an OAuth 2.0/OIDC server itself. docs | Passkeys, Google, Apple, Meta, email and password, magic links, sessions, authorization code + PKCE, ES256 JWTs with JWKS Shipping. Password login needs the paid Workers plan |
| Realtime | Shipping today: WebSocket channels for database changes, broadcast and presence, gated by row-level security. docs | A Realtime port with an in-process adapter, which is the native runtime’s half Shipping. The Cloudflare Durable Object adapter behind the same port Designed, #103 |
| Object storage | S3-compatible storage; bring your own S3, MinIO or R2. docs | A Blob port over R2 on Cloudflare, or a directory on a native binary Shipping, #105. No access policies or image transforms |
| Dashboard | A built-in web UI served by the stack: the compose file exposes a UI port, and the README points at localhost:7130. docs | Admin pages per module, built from its declared surface, behind a token login Shipping. No general data browser; build logs and deploy history wait on the control plane Planned |
| Custom domains | The Sites product deploys frontends through InsForge: every ready deployment gets a default URL, and “for a custom domain, add the domain in the dashboard and configure the DNS record it returns, usually a CNAME.” docs | Cloudflare for SaaS: 100 custom hostnames included, then $0.10 per hostname per month, to a limit of 50,000 Planned |
| Egress | Free includes 5 GB of bandwidth; Pro includes 250 GB, then $0.09 per GB. docs | Workers and R2 make no charge for data transfer out Shipping |
| Idle projects | Free projects are “paused after 1 week of inactivity.” docs | No administrative pause and nothing to restore. Compute scales to zero, so idle costs only storage. The Durable Object behind a D1 database hibernates between requests, which is a cold start, not an outage Shipping |
| License | Apache-2.0, the licence InsForge chose. Both columns here are open source, under different licences. docs | MIT across all crates Shipping |
| Usable today | Yes — the hosted service runs today at insforge.dev, and the self-hosted stack ships beside it. docs docs | Open-source core, yes. Managed layer, no Shipping |
From docs.insforge.dev, insforge.dev, github.com/InsForge and its repository files, checked 2026-10-18. Re-check before relying on them.
docs.insforge.dev/
Fairness
When InsForge is the right answer.
- You want a Supabase-style all-in-one with a hosted service running today, and a free tier beside it.
- Your coding agent drives the infrastructure: InsForge exposes its operations over MCP, on purpose.
- You want Postgres, auto-generated REST, realtime and a model gateway from one vendor.
- You are happy self-hosting one docker-compose stack on a single VM, or running on per-project instances in their cloud.
- It is the closest open-source peer to what the harness is building — the repository went from zero to v2.3.4 in about fifteen months.
InsForge ships a hosted service today; the harness ships a compiler and its crates, with the managed layer Planned. If the account boundary and compile-time composition matter more than the list above, request early access.