Harness IDP vs Self Managed Backstage - In-depth Feature Comparison
The following tables compare feature availability between Harness IDP and Self-Managed Backstage for various features like Software Catalog, Workflows, Plugins, Scorecards, Governance and Platform.
| Software Catalog | Self Managed Backstage | Harness IDP |
|---|---|---|
| Entity definition as Code | Yes | Yes |
| Favorites/bookmark entities | Yes | Yes |
| Catalog Dependency graph | Yes | Yes |
| Custom entity providers | Yes | Roadmap |
| Custom entity kinds | Limited | Roadmap |
| Custom catalog processors | Yes | Roadmap |
| Automated Service Discovery | No | Roadmap |
| Workflows | Self Managed Backstage | Harness IDP |
|---|---|---|
| Customizable UI for each workflow/template | Yes | Yes |
| Custom UI fields | Limited | Roadmap |
| UI based input form editor | Yes | Yes |
| UI based orchestrator | No | Yes |
| Write custom action/step | Limited | Yes |
| Declare and use variables | No | Yes |
| Isolation of infrastructure for executions | No | Yes |
| Granular access control of workflows | No | Yes |
| Native integration with Jira/Slack/ServiceNow/etc. | No | Yes |
| Integration with other orchestrators (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, etc.) | No | Limited |
| Long running processes as part of the step | No | Yes |
| Support for human interaction during execution | No | Yes |
| Define failure Strategy or Conditional executions | Limited | Yes |
| Scheduled execution | No | Yes |
| Plugins | Self Managed Backstage | Harness IDP |
|---|---|---|
| Install and configure plugins | Yes | Yes |
| Customize catalog layout using plugins | Yes | Yes |
| Write custom plugins | Yes | Yes |
| Scorecards | Self Managed Backstage | Harness IDP |
|---|---|---|
| Service Scorecards | Limited | Yes |
| Custom checks | No | Yes |
| Parsing support for file-content based checks | No | Yes |
| Custom Data Source | No | Roadmap |
| Governance | Self Managed Backstage | Harness IDP |
|---|---|---|
| Approval gates via Jira/ServiceNow/etc. for workflows | No | Yes |
| Role Based Access Control | No | Yes |
| Open Policy Agent based Policies | No | Yes |
| Audit Trails | No | Yes |
| Platform | Self Managed Backstage | Harness IDP |
|---|---|---|
| User and Group Management UI | No | Yes |
| Ingestion of Users, User Groups and Roles from different sources (LDAP, AD, SCIM, etc.) | Limited | Yes |
| Single Sign-On | Limited | Yes |
| Custom Dashboards for Key Adoption Insights | No | Yes |
| Scheduled executive reports | No | Yes |
| Alerting based on metrics trends | No | Yes |
| Project and Org based hierarchy of entities | No | Limited |
| Miscellaneous | Self Managed Backstage | Harness IDP |
|---|---|---|
| Customize UI theme colors | Yes | No |
| AI assisted onboarding and workflows | No | Roadmap |