
Rundeck turns scripts into governed jobs. Kestrel builds the same operational workflows from plain English, triggered by real signals, with approval gates and a full audit trail.
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Rundeck has been the default for turning existing scripts into governed, self-service jobs with RBAC and scheduling. If your runbooks are already scripts and you mainly need a safe way to let others run them, it does that well.
Kestrel starts from the operational outcome instead of the script. You describe what should happen in plain English, and the Workflow Agent assembles a reviewable workflow from 200+ pre-built actions across 40+ integrations — triggered automatically by the signal that should have started it.
| Rundeck | Kestrel | |
|---|---|---|
| How automations are authored | Job definitions wrapping existing scripts, configured in the UI or YAML | Described in plain English, generated as a workflow you can edit visually or in Python |
| What starts a run | Schedules, manual runs, and webhooks | Live signals from your stack — Kubernetes, cloud, CI/CD, alerting, Slack requests |
| Cross-tool steps | You write and maintain the integration code inside each script | 200+ pre-built actions across 40+ integrations, plus custom actions |
| AI investigation | Not part of the product | Built-in RCA and investigation steps that read logs, metrics, and cloud state |
| Approvals on risky steps | RBAC controls who may run a job | Per-step approval gates in Slack, so a human confirms the destructive action itself |
| Hosting | Self-hosted; OSS core with a commercial edition | Managed, with on-premise deployment available |
Both are reasonable choices. These are the cases where each one wins.
If your automation is already a mature library of scripts, you need to stay fully self-hosted on an OSS core, and scheduled or manually-triggered execution covers your needs.
If you are writing glue code to connect tools, want automations to fire on the signal instead of a schedule, or want investigation and remediation in one reviewable workflow.
Use natural language to build automations for incident response, cloud provisioning, CI/CD pipelines, security, and more. Edit with words, visually, or in code.
Use your words to build automations for incident response, cloud provisioning, CI/CD pipelines, developer requests, and more — with 200+ pre-built actions across 40+ integrations, and any number of custom actions.

Describe your workflow in plain English. The AI agent will generate a workflow graph you can edit.
Add steps, parameters, or approvals using natural language, edit visually on a DAG canvas with 200+ actions, or jump into the CLI and SDK for full programmatic control.

Describe your workflow in plain English. The AI agent will generate a workflow graph you can edit.
When a Kubernetes deployment rollout fails, in parallel: trigger the rollback GitHub actions and send a Slack message to #k8s-incidents; run RCA, create a GitOps PR for the fix, and on PR merge update the message in #k8s-incidents
Once configured, workflows always run the exact code you define. AI builds the workflow — deterministic execution ensures it runs reliably, every time.

Define who can trigger workflows and who needs to approve before execution. In-platform, Slack-based, and PR-based approval gates.

Track every workflow run with a real-time dashboard. Execution history, step-level logs, latency, and failure reasons.

Browse, filter, and inspect all workflow execution runs.
The Kestrel CLI, Python SDK, and MCP server give developers full control of Kestrel workflows from the terminal, application code, or AI coding assistants.

AI agents analyze your connected integrations and suggest ready-to-use workflows for your organization — so you know exactly what to automate next.

Automate operations with signal-driven, composable pipelines.






40+ integrations across infrastructure, PaaS, CI/CD, security, observability, databases, and more. Plus custom webhooks and HTTP APIs for anything else.
Workflows is usage-based — you pay per execution, not per seat. 14-day free trial, no credit card required.
Usage-based — pay per execution
| Tier | Price | Actions |
|---|---|---|
| Light | $0.10 | Slack, Jira, Linear, GitHub, GitLab, Confluence, Notion, PagerDuty, ArgoCD, Datadog, PostHog, Vercel, AWS Cost queries, custom HTTP APIs and webhooks, conditions, approvals, wait steps |
| Regular | $0.20 | K8s manifest generation, Helm values generation, cloud resource generation, AI cost analysis |
| Heavy | $0.40 | K8s RCA & fix generation, Cloud RCA & fix generation, AI code investigation, AI code fix generation, K8s investigation, cloud investigation, Vercel investigation |
Describe an automation in plain English and Kestrel builds a workflow you can review, test, and run. 14-day free trial with $1,000 in credits — no credit card required.