Best Software for Platform Engineers in 2026

1

Argo CD

CNCF

GitOps continuous delivery for Kubernetes.

2

Cilium

Isovalent (Cisco)

eBPF-powered networking, security and observability for k8s

3

groundcover

groundcover

eBPF-based observability with predictable cost

4

Linkerd

Buoyant

Lightweight, ultralight service mesh for Kubernetes

5

Flux CD

CNCF

GitOps continuous delivery for Kubernetes

6

OpenTofu

Linux Foundation

Open-source infrastructure as code, Terraform-compatible

7

Karpenter

Amazon Web Services

Just-in-time Kubernetes node autoscaling

8

KEDA

CNCF

Event-driven autoscaling for Kubernetes workloads

9

Komodor

Komodor

Kubernetes troubleshooting and operations platform

10

Scalr

Scalr

Terraform and OpenTofu automation and governance

11

vcluster

LoftLabs

Virtual Kubernetes clusters inside a host cluster

12

Kong Gateway

Kong

Cloud-native API gateway and management

13

Consul

HashiCorp (IBM)

Service discovery, mesh and configuration

14

Nomad

HashiCorp (IBM)

Simple, flexible workload orchestrator

15

Harbor

CNCF

Open-source cloud-native container registry

16

Packer

HashiCorp (IBM)

Build automated machine images for any platform

17

Crossplane

CNCF

Provision cloud infrastructure with Kubernetes APIs

18

Terragrunt

Gruntwork

DRY, scalable Terraform configurations

19

Ory

Ory

Open-source identity and access infrastructure

20

Pixie

CNCF

Instant Kubernetes observability with eBPF

21

Humanitec

Humanitec

Platform orchestrator for internal developer platforms

22

Istio

CNCF

Open-source service mesh for microservices

23

Apigee

Google Cloud

Full-lifecycle API management platform

24

Knative

CNCF

Serverless and event-driven workloads on Kubernetes

25

Gravitee

Gravitee.io

Open-source API management and event-native gateway

26

Grafana Mimir

Grafana Labs

Scalable long-term storage for Prometheus metrics