Warpgate vs HashiCorp Boundary

Warpgate is a self-hosted bastion and privileged access gateway that proxies SSH, HTTPS, Kubernetes, MySQL, PostgreSQL, RDP and VNC connections to internal targets. Users connect with their normal clients or through a browser-based terminal and desktop client, so no agent or SSH wrapper is installed on the client side. It ships as a single binary or a Docker image, keeps state in a database, and provides an admin web UI for managing targets, users, roles and session replay. RDP and VNC target support arrived in v0.27.0, published on 1 August 2026.

Pros

• Apache-2.0 licensed with no paid tier; the GitHub repository records 7,446 stars, 323 forks and releases through v0.27.2 on 3 August 2026, which indicates ongoing maintenance
• No client-side software is required: an independent setup guide states it forwards connections straight to the target rather than acting as a jump host
• One gateway covers interactive shells, Kubernetes, databases and, since v0.27.0, recorded RDP and VNC desktop sessions
• Deploys as a single binary or Docker image, with clustering and S3 recording storage documented for multi-node setups

Things to check

Pricing:

HashiCorp Boundary is an identity-aware session broker for remote access to infrastructure. It pairs naturally with HashiCorp Vault to provide just-in-time credential brokering: users authenticate with Boundary using their identity provider, Boundary requests short-lived credentials from Vault, and injects them into the session without exposing them. Boundary is open source (MPL 2.0) with a commercial HCP Boundary cloud offering.

Pros

• Natural fit for teams already running HashiCorp Vault
• Open source core with no license cost
• Terraform-native workflow for declarative access policies
• HCP option removes operational overhead

Things to check

• Younger product; smaller community than Teleport
• Session recording requires Enterprise tier
• Best value comes bundled with Vault. Less compelling standalone
• Fewer enterprise integrations than legacy PAM

Pricing: Free and open source; paid tiers on the vendor site.