What is Crossplane used for?

Crossplane is an open source CNCF project built on Kubernetes to orchestrate applications and infrastructure through custom declarative APIs. It is a good fit for platform engineering for organizations building internal platforms, and orchestrating applications and infrastructure across multiple environments.

Is Crossplane open source?

Yes. Crossplane is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at crossplane/crossplane and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. Crossplane is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Crossplane?

Yes. Crossplane can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Crossplane an alternative to?

Crossplane is an open-source alternative to Humanitec, env0, AWS AppConfig and Civo. Other open-source alternatives to Humanitec include Pulumi, Kubernetes and Rancher.

Is Crossplane actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Crossplane was on 13 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.4.2, published on 22 September 2026. The project has 12k stars on GitHub.

Crossplane: open-source alternative to Humanitec, env0

About Crossplane

Crossplane is a cloud-native framework for platform engineering that enables organizations to build control planes similar to those used by cloud providers. It extends Kubernetes to manage any resource anywhere and provides a library of components for assembling platforms. The framework allows users to expose declarative APIs that humans, automation, and AI systems can safely act on.

Built on the Kubernetes control plane, Crossplane is designed for extensibility through Providers that orchestrate new kinds of applications and infrastructure, and Configurations that expose new APIs. It puts users in control by allowing them to build platforms around their own opinions using declarative APIs that are explicit, auditable, and machine-readable. The project is maintained by Upbound and is part of the CNCF.

Key features

Build custom APIs and services with control planes
Extend Kubernetes to manage any resource anywhere
Use a library of components to assemble platforms faster
Expose declarative APIs for humans, automation, and AI systems
Encapsulate policies, permissions, and guardrails behind a custom API layer
Extensible through Providers and Configurations

Good fit for

Platform engineering for organizations building internal platforms
Orchestrating applications and infrastructure across multiple environments

Built with: Go tools; Kubernetes tools
Tags: kubernetes; control-plane; platform-engineering; infrastructure; cloud-native; open-source

Crossplane: questions and answers

What is Crossplane used for?: Crossplane is an open source CNCF project built on Kubernetes to orchestrate applications and infrastructure through custom declarative APIs. It is a good fit for platform engineering for organizations building internal platforms, and orchestrating applications and infrastructure across multiple environments.
Is Crossplane open source?: Yes. Crossplane is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at crossplane/crossplane and is written mainly in Go.
Is Crossplane free?: Yes. Crossplane is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Crossplane?: Yes. Crossplane can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Crossplane an alternative to?: Crossplane is an open-source alternative to Humanitec, env0, AWS AppConfig and Civo. Other open-source alternatives to Humanitec include Pulumi, Kubernetes and Rancher.
Is Crossplane actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Crossplane was on 13 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.4.2, published on 22 September 2026. The project has 12k stars on GitHub.