Free
Run Dapr on local machines, virtual machines, physical servers, or Kubernetes.
- No Dapr license or subscription fee
- No first-party hosted Dapr plan
- Infrastructure and operations billed separately
Dapr Pricing, Features & Alternatives
Build portable distributed applications with runtime APIs for service invocation, state, messaging, workflows, and secrets.
Dapr is a CNCF-graduated open-source runtime for building distributed applications. It provides consistent APIs for service invocation, state, pub/sub messaging, workflows, and secrets across Kubernetes, virtual machines, and local development. Dapr supplies an application runtime and API layer, not managed hosting; teams operate their applications and the Dapr runtime on their chosen infrastructure.
Best for
Teams building portable microservices, durable workflows, event-driven systems, or AI applications that need consistent APIs across Kubernetes, virtual machines, local development, and multiple clouds.
Watch out for
Dapr is an application runtime and API layer, not a managed hosting platform. Teams remain responsible for deploying, operating, upgrading, monitoring, and securing their applications and Dapr control plane.
- Provides
- Framework
- Interfaces
- API
- CLI
- SDK
- Works with
- Redis
- Terraform
Development & Execution
Supported platform capabilities, execution environments, development technologies, deployment models, integrations, and triggers.
Runtime, language, architecture, and event availability depends on the selected deployment target.
Deployment & packaging
- Docker / OCI
- Kubernetes
- Local Emulator
- Self-hosted
Integrations
- Redis
- Terraform
Database support
- MongoDB
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- Redis
Triggers
- Scheduled Invocation
- Database Events
- Event Streams
- Publish-Subscribe Topics
- HTTP Requests
- Direct Invocation
- Queue Messages
- Storage Events
Target runtimes
- Custom Runtime
- .NET Runtime
- JVM
- Node.js
Target languages
- C#
- C++
- Go
- Java
- JavaScript
- PHP
- Python
- Rust
- TypeScript
Target architectures
- x64
- ARM
Frameworks
- Express.js
- FastAPI
- Spring Boot
Pricing
Published pricing structure, representative costs, and material billing factors.
- Primary Billing
- Plan based
- Free Access
- Free plan
- Self-Hosted
- Self-hosted pricing available
Dapr Software
Dapr is free open-source software that runs on user-provided infrastructure.
Self-Hosted Pricing
Dapr itself is free; users fund compute, networking, storage, databases, observability, and operations.
Infrastructure & Availability
Where workloads run, how deployment is scoped, and what underlying infrastructure the platform depends on.
Self-managed
Dapr is a runtime installed on user-selected local, virtual-machine, container, or Kubernetes infrastructure. It does not operate a managed geographic deployment-region inventory.
Deployment model
- Self-managed
Infrastructure providers
- Amazon Web Services
- Microsoft Azure
- DigitalOcean
- Google Cloud Platform
- Any compatible local, virtual-machine, container, or Kubernetes infrastructure
Availability reviewed · Availability source
Security & Compliance
Security Controls
- Access Control
- API allowlists, access policies, and component and secret scopes Dapr runtime; operator and application configuration required
- Encryption in Transit
- Automatic mTLS with Sentry-issued workload identities Dapr sidecars and control-plane services; trust anchors and production configuration remain operator responsibilities
- Secrets Management
- Secrets API with allow and deny scopes Dapr runtime; secret-store backend is supplied and operated by the deployment owner
FAQ
Is Dapr a service mesh?
No. Dapr focuses on developer-facing application building blocks such as service invocation, state management, pub/sub messaging, and actors. It overlaps with service meshes in areas such as mTLS and tracing, but service meshes focus primarily on networking concerns.
Is Dapr free?
Yes. Dapr itself is free open-source software, but you still pay for the compute, networking, storage, databases, observability, and operations used to run it.
