Warpgate vs StrongDM

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:

StrongDM is an infrastructure access platform that provides a single proxy layer for databases, servers, Kubernetes, and internal web apps. Engineers authenticate once with their SSO identity and StrongDM handles credential injection, session recording, and fine-grained authorization. It is positioned between Teleport (cloud-native, OSS-first) and traditional PAM (CyberArk, BeyondTrust) as a modern but polished commercial solution.

Pros

• Polished admin experience; easy to onboard new engineers
• Broad protocol support across databases and clouds
• Credential injection removes a huge class of mistakes
• Strong audit trail for compliance (SOC 2, HIPAA, FedRAMP)

Things to check

• Contact-sales pricing makes budgeting hard
• Expensive per-seat at scale compared to OSS options
• Some database integrations rely on protocol proxying that adds latency
• Requires a relay per network segment for on-prem access

Pricing: Quote-based on the vendor site. AWS Marketplace list: Essentials $840/yr, Enterprise $1,200/yr, additional users from $100 per user/yr (2026).