Capgo Alternatives
Let's be honest: comparison pages are kinda silly. But here's an actually transparent look at your options.
Why this page exists
Look, we could make a fancy table showing how Capgo crushes every competitor on every metric. That's what everyone does. But it's BS, and you know it.
The truth? All the live update platforms do pretty much the same thing now: push JavaScript updates to your Capacitor apps. API? We all have one. Channels? Yep. Rollbacks? Sure.
So what actually matters? Let's talk about that instead.
What actually makes Capgo different
🌍 We do it openly and transparently
100% open source. MIT/MPL-2.0 licensed. You can see every line of code, self-host if you want, or fork it entirely.
- Plugin code: github.com/Cap-go/capacitor-updater
- Backend code: github.com/Cap-go/capgo
- Self-audit anytime - critical for compliance and security
- Public security audits available
- Public roadmap, public issues, public everything
⏰ We've been doing this for 4 years
Started in 2020. We've seen every edge case, survived every App Store policy change, and processed billions of updates. We're not going anywhere.
🚀 Biggest plugin provider after official Capacitor
We maintain 70+ free, open-source Capacitor plugins. More than anyone else in the ecosystem except the Capacitor team itself.
So yeah, we know a thing or two about Capacitor.
👨👩👧👦 Family business
Founded and run by Martin Donadieu and family. No VC pressure to "maximize growth metrics" or "pivot the business model." We're building this for the long term because it's our livelihood.
- Legal entities in both US and Europe
- Dedicated infrastructure for China
💰 Bootstrapped and profitable
No investors. No debt. Just sustainable revenue from happy customers.
That means we can charge fair prices ($14/month starter, not $499), and we won't suddenly shut down or 10x our pricing.
🙋 Only human support
No chatbots. No "AI assistants." No ticket systems that lose your message.
You get Martin or someone from the family. Usually within hours. Sometimes within minutes. Yes, even on weekends (we can't help ourselves 😅).
The other options (and when to pick them)
Ionic Appflow
⚠️ Shutting down December 31, 2027
The reality: Ionic announced they're winding down Appflow. Existing customers can use it until end of 2027, but no new customers or features.
When it was good: Appflow was great if you wanted everything in one place - CI/CD, live updates, native builds. The pioneers of this space.
Why we're different:
- We're not shutting down (kinda important!)
- $14/month vs their $499/month
- Open source vs closed source
- Focus on updates only, so we're better at it
Microsoft CodePush
🪦 Deprecated - Microsoft has moved on
The reality: CodePush was free and worked well... until Microsoft stopped maintaining it. It's in legacy mode for React Native, and there's no official Capacitor support.
When it was good: Free is hard to beat! And Microsoft's infrastructure meant it was reliable.
Why we're different:
- Actually maintained and improved every month
- Built specifically for Capacitor
- Real humans fixing bugs and adding features
- Still affordable: $14/month (not VC-subsidized free, but sustainable)
Capawesome Cloud
✅ Active and well-maintained
The reality: Capawesome is a solid, newer option with good German engineering. They were inspired by Capgo when building their live updates solution. They also make great Capacitor plugins.
When it was good: If you want a simpler interface and don't need some of the advanced features, it's a fine choice.
Honest differences:
- Experience: We've been doing this since 2020 (they launched live updates in 2024)
- Scale: We serve 1B+ updates/month, 750k+ devices (they don't publish stats yet)
- Pricing: Both affordable - we start at $14/month, they start at €9/month
- Focus: Live updates is our core business; for them it's a side offering to their paid plugins
- Security & Transparency: We're 100% open source with public audits and self-audit capability; they're 0% open on backend with no public audits
- Support: Both provide human support (we're both small teams!)
🤔 What we're NOT good at (honesty time)
All-in-one CI/CD: We don't bundle CI/CD like Appflow did. You use your own (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, etc). But we CAN handle native builds from your CI if you want - just call our build API from your pipeline.
Documentation complexity: Basic automatic updates are well documented. But Capgo has many options (manual, half-manual, channel_default, etc.) that aren't always easy to understand for every use case yet. We're actively improving this.
Why people actually choose us
"The migration from Appflow took 2 hours. We went from $499/month to $14/month. Same features, better DX."
— React developer from France
"I had a question at 10pm on Saturday. Martin himself answered in 15 minutes. Insane."
— Solo developer from Brazil
"Being open source means we could audit the security ourselves. That's non-negotiable for our healthcare app."
— CTO of health tech startup
"The fact it's a family business makes me trust it MORE, not less. These folks aren't going to rugpull us."
— Mobile team lead from Germany
Try it yourself (free for 14 days)
No credit card. No commitment. Just see if it works for you.
Start free trialQuestions? Ask us on Discord or email support@capgo.app