The same developer experience as Cloud Run or Azure Container Apps — three commands from zero to production. But underneath, it's real Kubernetes with full control.
Three Commands to Production
Create a cluster, add a service, deploy. No Dockerfiles, no manifests, no CI/CD pipelines to write — everything is auto-generated.
Blue-Green and Canary Without a Service Mesh
Instant traffic switching using native Kubernetes primitives. No Istio, no sidecar overhead, no extra infrastructure.
Cross-Cloud Environments
Multiple cloud providers per environment. If an entire provider goes down, clusters on other providers keep serving. No vendor lock-in.
Full-Stack PR Preview Environments
Each PR gets a fully isolated copy of the entire platform. All services talk to each other within the PR namespace automatically.
How Calq Relay Stacks Up
See how Calq Relay compares to managed serverless platforms, service meshes, and GitOps tools.
Calq Relay vs. Cloud Run / Container Apps / App Runner
Calq Relay delivers the same developer experience as managed serverless platforms but runs on standard Kubernetes with full control, no vendor lock-in, and capabilities that managed platforms simply cannot offer.
Feature
Calq Relay
Cloud Run
Container Apps
App Runner
DNS + TLS
ExternalDNS + cert-manager
Built-in
Built-in
Manual
Service Networking
Shared namespace
VPC connectors
Same environment
Manual
Platform Config
Unified (all services)
Per-service
Per-service
Per-service
Max Instances
Unlimited (node pool)
1000
300
25
Request Timeout
Unlimited
60 min
30 min
30 min
Cluster + Registry Setup
Single command
CI/CD Workflows
Auto-generated
GitOps
ArgoCD
Environment Promotion
Single command
PR Preview Environments
Full-stack
Blue-Green Deployments
Canary Deployments
Replica ratio
Traffic splitting
Coordinated Multi-Service Scaling
Grouped mode
Multi-Cluster
Cross-Cloud Environments
Multiple providers per environment
GCP only
Azure only
AWS only
Self-Hosted / On-Prem
Vendor Lock-In
None
GCP
Azure
AWS
Cost Model
Shared nodes
Per-service billing
Per-service billing
Per-service billing
Calq Relay vs. Istio / Service Mesh
Calq Relay achieves blue-green and canary deployments using native Kubernetes primitives — no service mesh required, no sidecar overhead, no extra infrastructure cost.
Feature
Calq Relay
Istio
Blue-Green
Service selector patch (instant)
VirtualService weight (instant)
Canary
Replica ratio
VirtualService weighted routing
Canary Drift Protection
CronJob enforcer
Control plane
Traffic Precision
Proportional to replica count
Exact percentage per request
Complexity
CLI command
CRDs + control plane + sidecar injection
Setup Time
Minutes
Hours to days
Multi-Cluster Setup
Automated
Complex (multi-network or primary-remote)
Cross-Region Switchover
Single command
VirtualService routing
Infrastructure Cost
None (CLI tool, no runtime components)
+20–30% cluster resources (control plane + sidecar per pod)
Calq Relay vs. ArgoCD Alone
ArgoCD syncs Git to a cluster. Calq Relay orchestrates what ArgoCD cannot: source-to-cluster deployment, cross-environment promotion, blue-green switchover, and platform bootstrapping.
Feature
Calq Relay + ArgoCD
ArgoCD Alone
Git to Cluster Sync
ArgoCD (delegated)
ArgoCD
Rollback
Blue-green: switchover. Standard: ArgoCD native
Git revert
Source-to-Cluster Deploy
Single command
Dockerfile Generation
Auto-generated for .NET
Manifest Scaffolding
Auto-generated with anti-affinity
DNS and TLS
ExternalDNS + cert-manager
Environment Promotion
Single command
Blue-Green Switchover
Cross-Cloud Image Import
Platform Bootstrapping
Single command
Cluster-Wide Rolling Updates
Anti-affinity in deployment spec
Cluster-Wide Restart
Anti-affinity parallel restart
Pod Recycling
Cluster-wide CronJob
Canary Enforcement
CronJob maintains replica ratio
A Simpler Approach
Both examples set up a multi-environment deployment pipeline.
Calq Relay
calq-relay cluster create \
--cluster-provider azure \
--cluster aks-dev --environment dev
calq-relay service add
calq-relay cluster add \
--cluster aks-prod \
--cluster-provider azure --environment prod
calq-relay deploy --environment dev
calq-relay promote --source dev --target prod
calq-relay switchover --environment prod
Traditional Approach
# Typically 200+ lines of bash per workflow:
# - write Dockerfile manually
# - write Kubernetes manifests manually
# - configure CI pipeline for build + push
# - az/gcloud auth to both clusters
# - kubectl apply with label selectors
# - manual DNS and TLS configuration
# - repeated per microservice, per operation
Pricing & Licensing
Start building for free on open-source projects, or choose a commercial license to keep your source code private.
Open Source License
Perfect for personal projects, open-source development, and product evaluation. Use freely under the AGPLv3 license terms.
.NET projects get zero-config deployment with auto-generated Dockerfiles. For other languages, provide a Dockerfile and set the service name — the entire Kubernetes/ArgoCD pipeline works the same regardless of what's in the container.
Can I use Calq Relay with existing Terraform infrastructure?
Yes. Use Terraform for infrastructure provisioning, then register existing clusters with calq-relay cluster add. Clusters created by Calq Relay are standard cloud resources and can be imported into Terraform.
Which cloud providers are supported?
Azure and GCP have built-in support for cluster creation. Any other provider (AWS, on-prem, etc.) works by setting auth commands in the config. All deployment operations work with any provider.
Ready to Deploy with Confidence?
From source code to production on any cloud, in single commands
