Port vs. Backstage: What’s the Best Internal Developer Portal?

Backstage: The Open-Source Heavyweight

Pros of Backstage

Backstage, developed by Spotify for their internal engineering team and open-sourced in 2020, is one of the most talked-about frameworks for building internal developer portals. Its plugin-based architecture gives teams the ability to create custom workflows, integrations, and tooling to suit their needs. Backstage has also amassed a large community, which helps drive continuous improvements and offers a wide array of shared plugins.

For companies with extensive engineering resources, Backstage can be an appealing choice due to its open-source flexibility and complete control over the platform’s features and functionality.

Cons of Backstage

High Resource Requirements for Customization

The primary downside of Backstage is the significant resource investment required to implement and maintain the platform. While open-source flexibility is a selling point, it’s a double-edged sword. Customizing Backstage often requires the expertise of full-time developers with knowledge of React, TypeScript, and authentication protocols like SAML/OpenID. This level of customization and maintenance isn’t feasible for teams that don’t have the luxury of dedicated developers for portal management.

Moreover, the time required to stand up a functional instance of Backstage can take months—anywhere from 6 to 12 months depending on the complexity of your needs. For teams that need immediate results, this can severely hamper productivity.

Fixed Data Models and Manual Maintenance

Another issue with Backstage is its fixed data models, which make it difficult to represent entities beyond simple services, such as machine learning models, infrastructure components, or repositories. This rigidity limits how organizations can use Backstage to accurately reflect their tech stack. Additionally, Backstage requires manual data ingestion through YAML files, which further complicates service catalog maintenance .

Low External Adoption Rates

Although Backstage boasts a 99% internal adoption rate at Spotify, external organizations report an average adoption rate of only 10%. This discrepancy is often due to the platform’s complexity and lack of task prioritization features. Developers can easily become overwhelmed by the noise and sheer volume of unstructured data, which lowers engagement and productivity.

Instability at Spotify

While Spotify has made a concerted effort to monetize the Backstage framework lately, their primary focus as a business is the Spotify platform. This means that when the business as a whole struggles, Backstage isn’t necessarily going to be “safe” from layoffs and restructuring which has happened as recently as December of 2023 when they laid off 17% of their workforce.

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Comparison to OpsLevel

OpsLevel addresses these pain points by providing a fully-managed platform with an intuitive interface and automated catalog creation. There’s no need for manual YAML file updates, and OpsLevel integrates easily with your existing services. Most importantly, OpsLevel is ready to use within 30 to 45 days, offering faster time to value than Backstage .

Port: Customization Taken Too Far?

Pros of Port

Like Backstage, Port is heavily focused on customization, giving teams the ability to tailor their internal developer platform using blueprints. Port’s primary selling point is that it lets you structure your services exactly the way you want, which can be useful for organizations with highly specific workflows.

Cons of Port

Over-Customization Leading to Complexity

Port’s greatest strength is also its biggest weakness. The platform’s extreme focus on customization often results in unnecessary complexity, particularly for teams that need to deploy quickly. Organizations find themselves spending too much time building, tweaking, and maintaining blueprints instead of solving core operational problems . This creates barriers to adoption and can lead to a poor developer experience.

Additionally, Port’s catalog creation is entirely manual, which is both time-consuming and error-prone. As teams scale, keeping the catalog up to date becomes a challenge, increasing operational overhead and introducing the risk of data inconsistencies.

Inefficient Reporting and Standards Tracking

Port also falls short in the area of standards enforcement. While it offers customizable scorecards, these are not first-class objects within the platform. As a result, tracking service maturity, compliance, and production readiness becomes difficult. Reporting on service health is limited, and there’s no way to enforce standards across teams without a significant amount of manual intervention. This lack of deep reporting and automation makes it hard for engineering leaders to maintain visibility into service health over time.

Long Implementation Time and High Costs

Much like Backstage, Port’s implementation time is lengthy. Teams often report taking 3 to 6 months to fully deploy the platform, with some organizations needing even longer. The high degree of customization leads to increased ownership costs, both in terms of engineering time and financial investment. Port’s licensing fees are also significantly higher than OpsLevel’s, often doubling the total cost of ownership.

Comparison to OpsLevel

In contrast, OpsLevel provides a more balanced approach to customization. While teams can still tailor scorecards and workflows to meet their needs, OpsLevel avoids the pitfalls of over-customization by offering out-of-the-box functionality that works immediately. The platform’s automated catalog maintenance and robust reporting features ensure that service health is always visible, and OpsLevel’s standards enforcement tools help teams maintain operational efficiency without introducing unnecessary complexity .

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Why OpsLevel Outperforms Both Port and Backstage

Faster Implementation with Less Overhead

OpsLevel is designed to provide quick, impactful results. Unlike the lengthy setup times associated with both Port and Backstage, OpsLevel can be fully deployed within 30 to 45 days. This allows teams to start realizing value much sooner, without the need for dedicated full-time developers to manage the platform.

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OpsLevel’s automated catalog creation and maintenance significantly reduce the operational burden of keeping your service catalog up to date. Unlike Port and Backstage, which require heavy manual involvement, OpsLevel ensures your services are always current, without the risk of human error.

Flexible Standards Without the Complexity

While Port and Backstage offer high degrees of customization, they often overwhelm teams with unnecessary options that slow down progress. OpsLevel takes a more streamlined approach, offering flexible scorecards and customizable workflows without the complexity that hinders quick implementation. This makes OpsLevel the ideal choice for teams that want to enforce standards efficiently while maintaining focus on what really matters—delivering value to their end users .

Superior Reporting and Visibility

One of OpsLevel’s key advantages is its deep reporting capabilities. Unlike Port, which lacks visibility into service health and scorecard results, OpsLevel makes tracking service maturity, compliance, and operational readiness a seamless experience. You can generate detailed reports on checks, scorecards, and campaigns to maintain full visibility over your services . This empowers engineering leaders to make data-driven decisions and continuously improve service quality.

Cost-Effective and Scalable

Finally, OpsLevel’s pricing model makes it a more cost-effective solution compared to both Port and Backstage. With lower total cost of ownership, OpsLevel ensures that teams get the functionality they need without the excessive costs associated with highly customizable platforms. Whether your organization is scaling rapidly or just starting its IDP journey, OpsLevel provides a scalable solution that grows with you, without overwhelming your team with high ownership costs .

Both Port and Backstage offer compelling customization options, but the hidden costs—both in terms of resources and complexity—can make them difficult to justify for most organizations. Port’s over-customization and Backstage’s high resource requirements introduce significant operational overhead, making it hard to achieve fast results.

OpsLevel, on the other hand, delivers a balanced solution that combines flexibility with simplicity. With fast implementation times, automated catalog maintenance, and deep reporting features, OpsLevel outperforms both competitors in terms of value, ease of use, and long-term scalability. If you’re ready to transform your internal developer platform, schedule a demo today and see how OpsLevel can help you achieve your goals faster and more efficiently.