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Comparison · DevOps

Exoscale vs Rivet

A side-by-side editorial comparison of Exoscale and Rivet — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.

Exoscale vs Rivet: at a glance

FeatureExoscaleRivet
SectorDevOpsDevOps
Velocity score6.37.5
Sparks · 30d13
Top themescloud-infrastructure, european-cloud, key-management, data-sovereigntyactors, ai agents, sqlite, forking
Last editorial update10d ago2d ago
WebsiteVisit →—

What is Exoscale?

Exoscale lets customers keep their own encryption keys outside its cloud.

Exoscale, a European cloud provider, opened a private preview of KMS External Key Store on 3 November: customers connect Exoscale KMS to their own HSM or key manager through a proxy they host, and Exoscale never sees the key material. It implements the AWS KMS XKS proxy API, so existing proxies work unchanged. This follows a free VPC in every zone in October, object-storage lifecycle rules, asymmetric KMS keys and cheaper IPv6 load balancing.

Read the full Exoscale trajectory →

What is Rivet?

Rivet Actors can now fork in 20 ms, SQLite database included, without copying data.

Rivet builds infrastructure for long-lived actors and AI agents: BYOC, OpenTelemetry tracing, actor-scoped JWTs and agentOS Hosted VMs. The 3.0 Preview made Rivet a single stateless binary on S3, and the Rust SDK reached general availability on 6 November. On 11 November Rivet added actor forking: a fork starts in 20 ms with the original actor's state and SQLite database and costs nothing until it writes.

Read the full Rivet trajectory →

Exoscale vs Rivet: editorial side-by-side

E
Exoscale
DEVOPS
6.3

Exoscale lets customers keep their own encryption keys outside its cloud.

◆ Current state

Exoscale, a European cloud provider, opened a private preview of KMS External Key Store on 3 November: customers connect Exoscale KMS to their own HSM or key manager through a proxy they host, and Exoscale never sees the key material. It implements the AWS KMS XKS proxy API, so existing proxies work unchanged. This follows a free VPC in every zone in October, object-storage lifecycle rules, asymmetric KMS keys and cheaper IPv6 load balancing.

◆ Where it's heading

KMS has moved fast: asymmetric keys in early October, external keys four weeks later. Together with VPC and lifecycle rules, Exoscale is closing gaps against the hyperscalers, and XKS points its pitch at sovereignty-bound customers who need to prove the provider cannot decrypt their data.

◆ Prediction

XKS will likely widen from private preview to general availability, and the next steps are probably more services encrypting with KMS keys; the entries don't say which services or when.

R
Rivet
DEVOPS
7.5

Rivet Actors can now fork in 20 ms, SQLite database included, without copying data.

◆ Current state

Rivet builds infrastructure for long-lived actors and AI agents: BYOC, OpenTelemetry tracing, actor-scoped JWTs and agentOS Hosted VMs. The 3.0 Preview made Rivet a single stateless binary on S3, and the Rust SDK reached general availability on 6 November. On 11 November Rivet added actor forking: a fork starts in 20 ms with the original actor's state and SQLite database and costs nothing until it writes.

◆ Where it's heading

Rivet keeps turning its S3-backed storage engine into features for agent workloads. Copy-on-write forking follows from the 3.0 storage design and gives agents a cheap way to branch a session, try something and discard it. The SDK and auth work of the past two months points to Rivet positioning actors as the runtime for agent backends.

◆ Prediction

Forking is likely to show up next in agentOS and the Pi integrations as a way to branch agent runs; the entries do not say when 3.0 leaves preview.

Alternatives to Exoscale and Rivet

Other DevOps products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Exoscale or Rivet.

See all Exoscale alternatives → · See all Rivet alternatives →

Recent activity from Exoscale and Rivet

Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.

  1. 2d agoRivetIntroducing OpenOrange: Run Cloudflare Workers Anywhere ⚡
  2. 3d agoRivetIntroducing Actor Forking for SQLite ⚡
  3. 8d agoRivetRust SDK for Rivet Actors Is Now Generally Available
  4. 11d agoExoscaleKMS External Key Store (XKS) is now in private preview ⚡
  5. 17d agoExoscaleVirtual Private Cloud (VPC) is now available
  6. 19d agoRivetIntroducing Rivet 3.0 Preview ⚡
  7. 24d agoExoscaleNew on the Marketplace: MonitOP, powered by Exoscale
  8. 26d agoExoscaleSOS: Native Bucket Lifecycle Rules
  9. 1mo agoRivetIntroducing agentOS 0.4 & Hosted VMs
  10. 1mo agoExoscaleKMS now supports asymmetric encryption and digital signatures
  11. 1mo agoRivetIntroducing Pi Durable for Rivet
  12. 1mo agoExoscaleNetwork Load Balancer now supports IPv6

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Exoscale and Rivet?

They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Rivet is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 6.3), with 3 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 1. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.

Is Exoscale better than Rivet?

Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Rivet is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 7.5 vs 6.3), with 3 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 1. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other DevOps products to evaluate alongside.

What are the best alternatives to Exoscale?

Top Exoscale alternatives in DevOps are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Exoscale alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/exoscale for the full list with editorial commentary on each.

What are the best alternatives to Rivet?

Top Rivet alternatives in DevOps are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Rivet alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/rivet for the full list with editorial commentary on each.