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CDviz vs Swarmia ​

Looking for a self-hosted or open-source Swarmia alternative? This page compares CDviz and Swarmia for teams evaluating engineering effectiveness metrics, data ownership, and cost.

CDviz is an open-source platform with self-hosted and SaaS options. Swarmia is a fully-managed commercial SaaS focused on engineering effectiveness. They target overlapping use cases but differ on data model, extensibility, and deployment.

Last updated March 2026. Corrections welcome.

At a glance ​

CDvizSwarmia
LicenseApache 2.0Proprietary
Self-hosted✅❌
SaaS option⏳ waitlist✅
Commercial support✅✅ (included)
Data ownership✅ full❌ vendor-hosted
CDEvents standard✅❌
DORA metrics✅✅
PR / code review analytics⏳✅
Engineering investment tracking⏳✅
Working agreements / team norms❌✅
Pipeline / CI-CD observability✅limited
Beyond monitoring: trigger workflows✅❌
Customizable storage backends✅ (PostgreSQL, ClickHouse…)❌
VisualizationGrafana, BI, AI agents, MCP, IDPbuilt-in dashboards
CostInfra + optional supportPer-user pricing

Key differences ​

  • Data sovereignty: With CDviz, your SDLC event data stays in your infrastructure. Swarmia pulls data from GitHub, Jira, and Slack into its own servers.
  • Pipeline-first vs. team-first: CDviz centers on CI/CD pipeline events and delivery workflow observability. Swarmia centers on developer and team effectiveness — PR cycle times, code review depth, investment distribution across initiatives.
  • Open standard: CDviz is built on CDEvents, making your event data portable across vendors. Swarmia uses a proprietary pull-based data model.
  • Observe and act: CDviz events can trigger downstream workflows — the same event stream drives both observability and automation. Swarmia is analytics-only.
  • Working agreements: Swarmia lets teams define and track working agreements (e.g., PR size limits, response time targets). CDviz does not have this concept natively, but events can be used to build custom alerting.
  • Customization: CDviz lets you enrich events at ingestion, choose your storage backend, and connect Grafana, BI platforms, AI agents, and MCP-connected tools. Swarmia is a closed analytics product.
  • Cost model: CDviz self-hosted is free (infra costs only). Swarmia uses per-developer SaaS pricing.

When to choose CDviz ​

  • Data ownership or privacy regulations make vendor-hosted SaaS unacceptable.
  • Your primary need is CI/CD pipeline visibility and DORA metrics from a push-based event model.
  • You want events to trigger workflows — not just observe them.
  • Your organization is adopting the CDEvents open standard.
  • You need flexible storage or reporting (BI, AI agents, MCP, IDP integrations).
  • You want commercial support without vendor lock-in (contact us).

When to choose Swarmia ​

  • You need PR cycle time, code review quality, and developer throughput metrics out of the box.
  • Your teams want to set and track working agreements together.
  • Engineering investment tracking (mapping effort to product initiatives) is a core requirement.
  • Zero operational overhead is required.
  • Per-developer SaaS pricing fits your budget.

Summary ​

Swarmia is a polished fit for engineering teams focused on developer effectiveness, PR analytics, and working agreements without operational overhead. CDviz is the right choice when data ownership, open standards, CI/CD pipeline observability, event-driven automation, and cost control matter — with commercial support available to reduce operational risk.

Get started with CDviz

Self-host CDviz — free, Apache 2.0. Or join the SaaS waitlist.

FAQ ​

Does CDviz support working agreements? Not natively. CDviz events can power custom alerting for agreement violations, but Swarmia has this built-in.

Can I self-host Swarmia? No. Swarmia is a SaaS-only product.

Is CDviz free? Yes — Apache 2.0. No per-developer pricing; infrastructure costs only when self-hosted. Optional commercial support.