Compare HCP Boundary and Boundary Community Edition
HCP Boundary is a fully managed deployment of Boundary on the HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP), giving you production-grade access management infrastructure without the operational overhead of self-managing controllers, workers, and databases. The sections below compare HCP Boundary and Boundary Community Edition feature by feature.
Boundary Community Edition vs. HCP Boundary
Here is a comparison between Boundary Community Edition features and an HCP Boundary instance.
| Feature | Boundary Community Edition | HCP Boundary |
|---|---|---|
| OIDC Auth Integration | Included | Included |
| Dynamic Host Catalogs | Included | Included |
| Self-Managed Workers | Included | Included |
| Credential Brokering with Vault | Included | Included |
| Credential Injection with Vault | Included | |
| Push button deployment | Included | |
| Real time audit log streaming | Included | |
| Session recording | Included |
| Support | Boundary Community Edition | HCP Boundary |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic backups | Included | |
| Automatic upgrades | Included | |
| Uptime SLA or Support | Community; no SLA | Included |
How does HCP Boundary work?
Organizations that adopt HCP Boundary can focus on integrating Boundary into their environments without the need to focus on traditional operational tasks, such as which operating system to deploy the Boundary cluster on, how to manage and monitor the Boundary application, or how to upgrade to newer versions of Boundary.
HCP Boundary is deployed using the HashiCorp Cloud Platform Portal. Once deployed, Boundary administrators can interact with Boundary through the Admin UI or command line interface (CLI) to manage Boundary resources, such as orgs, users, groups, permissions, and roles. These resources provide fine-grained access to Boundary targets and projects.
Support and community
To connect with other HashiCorp practitioners using HCP Boundary, join the Boundary discuss community.
For issues with HCP Boundary, please submit a support request.
Knowledge checks
A quiz to test your knowledge.
What features are included in HCP Boundary but not in Boundary Community Edition?
🔘 OIDC auth integration and dynamic host catalogs.
🔘 Self-managed workers and credential brokering with Vault.
🔘 Credential injection, session recording, push-button deployment, and automatic upgrades.
🔘 CLI access and REST API support.
❌ OIDC auth integration and dynamic host catalogs.
❌ Self-managed workers and credential brokering with Vault.
✅ Credential injection, session recording, push-button deployment, and automatic upgrades.
❌ CLI access and REST API support.
Why does HCP Boundary reduce operational overhead compared to Boundary Community Edition?
HCP Boundary is a fully managed service on HashiCorp Cloud Platform, so teams do not need to manage the underlying operating system, monitor the Boundary application, or handle upgrades — HashiCorp handles those operational tasks automatically.
True or false — Boundary Community Edition includes an uptime SLA and dedicated support from HashiCorp?
False — Boundary Community Edition relies on community support with no uptime SLA. HCP Boundary includes an uptime SLA and dedicated support.
Next steps
In the next tutorial you will learn how to install the Boundary CLI to manage your HCP Boundary instance.