Best Platform Engineering Tools in 2026

Platform engineering in 2026 is less about finding the perfect tool and more about building a cohesive internal developer platform (IDP): a service catalog + paved roads (golden paths) + automation + guardrails + production insights.

The tooling landscape is moving fast, but the pattern is stable:

• Developer-facing layer: portals, catalogs, scorecards, self-service actions
• Platform backbone: Kubernetes + GitOps + infrastructure control planes + Infrastructure as code (IaC)
• Guardrails: policy-as-code + secrets + supply-chain controls
• Feedback loops: observability + reliability + cost signals
• Automation: workflow engines + ops in chat / agents

Below is a curated list of 20 tools that are modern, widely discussed in current platform engineering circles, and gaining traction across real platform teams, including a mix of OSS and commercial solutions.

1. Infisical (Secrets + Identity Security Layer)

A secrets management and identity security platform used to manage application/runtime secrets (and related identity/security controls) across environments. It’s commonly integrated into developer self-service and deployment workflows as part of a modern platform stack.

2. Backstage (Spotify OSS)

An open-source framework for building an internal developer portal (service catalog, templates/scaffolding, plugin ecosystem). It’s commonly the “front door” to a platform team’s golden paths.

3. Port

A commercial internal developer portal focused on flexible software catalogs, scorecards, and developer self-service actions (workflow triggers) to standardize how teams ship.

4. Cortex

A developer portal approach combining service catalogs and scorecards that emphasizes standards, production readiness, and operational maturity tracking (often integrated with Backstage).

5. OpsLevel

An internal developer portal/service catalog oriented around operational maturity and “campaigns” to drive org-wide improvements (standards, migrations, reliability initiatives).

6. Roadie

A managed Backstage offering (hosted/operated), typically chosen by teams that want Backstage’s ecosystem without running it themselves.

7. Humanitec (Platform Orchestrator)

A platform orchestration layer that sits at the core of an IDP to standardize deployments and dependencies via golden paths, generating environment-specific configuration dynamically.

8. Qovery

An internal platform and application deployment layer (often Kubernetes-based) that provides self-service environments, deployment workflows, and platform abstractions. It’s frequently used to reduce “yak shaving” for app teams.

9. Kubernetes

Kubernetes is the default foundation for many internal platforms, handling cluster orchestration and workload runtime. As a result, much of today’s platform engineering tooling assumes Kubernetes as the baseline.

10. Argo CD

A GitOps continuous delivery controller for Kubernetes that continuously reconciles “desired state in Git” with what’s running in clusters (self-healing delivery).

11. Crossplane

A Kubernetes-native control plane framework that lets platform teams expose higher-level APIs for infrastructure and services (cloud resources, dependencies) so developers can self-serve without becoming infrastructure experts.

12. OpenTofu

A community-driven open-source IaC tool positioned as a drop-in alternative to Terraform, under Linux Foundation stewardship, with strong ecosystem compatibility.

13. Pulumi

IaC using real programming languages (TypeScript, Python, Go, etc.). It’s useful when teams want software engineering constructs (modules, tests, loops) for platform builds.

14. Spacelift

Infrastructure automation/orchestration for IaC workflows (Terraform/OpenTofu/Pulumi, policies, approvals, drift detection) that is often used as the “control plane” for infrastructure changes across many repos/teams.

15. OPA Gatekeeper

A Kubernetes-native policy controller built on Open Policy Agent (OPA) that enforces admission policies (guardrails) using constraints and policy definitions.

16. Kyverno

A Kubernetes-native policy-as-code engine that lets teams write and enforce policies using familiar Kubernetes-style configuration (YAML/CEL), commonly used for cluster guardrails and automation.

17. OpenTelemetry

A Cloud Native Computing Foundation standard for instrumenting and collecting telemetry (traces, metrics, logs) so you can export to any observability backend. It’s critical for platform-wide visibility without vendor lock-in.

18. Grafana (LGTM-style stack)

A widely adopted observability UI and ecosystem that often serves as the single pane of glass for metrics, logs, and traces. Grafana is commonly used alongside the LGTM stack, which refers to Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for traces, and Mimir for metrics, and is frequently embedded into internal platform portals and runbooks.

19. Dagger

A programmable CI/CD engine that runs pipeline steps in containers, making pipelines portable across laptops/CI environments and easier to standardize across many services.

20. External Secrets Operator (ESO)

A Kubernetes operator that reads secrets from external systems/APIs and syncs/injects them into Kubernetes Secrets. It’s useful for “don’t put secrets in Git” workflows while keeping apps Kubernetes-native.

How to Pick From This List (So You Don’t Create a Tool Zoo)

If you’re building (or fixing) a platform program in 2026, pick tools based on jobs-to-be-done:

1. Make security the default: secrets integration (Infisical + ESO pattern)
2. Make it easy to do the right thing (golden paths): Backstage/Port + an orchestrator (Humanitec/Qovery)
3. Make changes safe and auditable: GitOps (Argo CD) + IaC automation (Spacelift) + policy-as-code (Gatekeeper/Kyverno)
4. Make production behavior visible: OpenTelemetry + your observability stack

A good platform tool isn’t the one with the most features. It’s the one that reduces cognitive load for dev teams while making the platform team’s standards easier to adopt than to bypass.