Teleport
Teleport gives engineers, scripts and AI agents short-lived, identity-based access to servers, Kubernetes clusters, databases, desktops and internal apps, replacing shared passwords, long-lived keys and jump servers, and records every session for audit.
CyberReviewed Editorial Team · Updated · goteleport.com
Company details
- Score
- 7.5/10Ranked 9 of 17 (tied)
- Category
- Identity security
- Founded
- 2015
- Headquarters
- Oakland, California
- Leadership
- Ev Kontsevoy, co-founder and CEO
- Funding disclosed
- $169 million, including a $110 million Series C in 2022
- Pricing
- Community Edition free for companies under 100 employees and $10 million revenue; $50,000 per year for 25 users of the cloud version (AWS Marketplace)
- Best fit
- Engineering teams that need audited access to many servers, clusters and databases
Our take
Teleport is a strong pick for engineering-heavy companies that want to retire shared SSH keys, VPNs and jump servers and prove to auditors who touched what. Its cloud version starts at $50,000 a year on AWS Marketplace, so small teams will lean on the free Community Edition, which takes more work to run.
Scores by criterion
| Criterion | Score |
|---|---|
| Pricing transparency | 6.6 |
| Product scope and fit | 8.4 |
| Company durability | 8.0 |
| Evidence of adoption | 8.2 |
| Ease of adoption | 6.4 |
| Overall score (average of the five) | 7.5 |
Each criterion is defined on our methodology page.
Access built on identity
Teleport issues short-lived certificates tied to a person's or machine's identity instead of standing passwords and keys. It covers SSH servers, Kubernetes clusters, databases, Windows and Linux desktops, Git repositories, MCP servers used by AI agents, and machine identities for pipelines and services.1 Its products are Teleport Access for on-demand, least-privilege access, Teleport Identity for governance and hardening, and Teleport Policy for one view of access rules, which it says helps with PCI DSS, SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and FedRAMP.2
Free under a size limit, then usage-based
Since Teleport 16 in June 2024, the Community Edition is free for companies with fewer than 100 employees and less than $10 million in annual revenue; larger companies need a commercial license.3 Enterprise pricing is usage-based, counted in monthly active users and protected resources such as servers, clusters and databases, but Teleport does not publish rates.1 Its AWS Marketplace listing for the cloud version charges $50,000 for 12 months with a minimum of 25 users.2
From a side project to a unicorn
Ev Kontsevoy, who earlier founded the email service Mailgun, started the company as Gravitational in 2015 and open sourced Teleport that year as one part of a larger product.73 When remote work spread in 2020, Teleport was soon earning as much as the main product and growing faster, and in November 2020 the company renamed itself Teleport.7 In May 2022 it raised a $110 million Series C led by Bessemer Venture Partners at a $1.1 billion valuation, bringing total funding to $169 million.4 In February 2025 it said more than 500 companies used it, almost half with more than 1,000 employees, including three of the five largest financial services firms, and that revenue was growing about 50% a year.5 It is based in Oakland, California.6
How it compares with Silverfort and JumpCloud
Silverfort adds multi-factor authentication and monitoring to the identity systems a company already runs, such as Active Directory, without agents. JumpCloud is a cloud directory that manages employees' logins and devices across the whole company. Teleport is narrower and deeper: it sits in front of production infrastructure, replaces the keys and jump servers engineers use to reach it, and records what they do once inside.
Limits
Reviewers say self-hosting Teleport is still hard to set up and maintain, and want more ready-made integrations with SIEM and monitoring tools. It does not manage employee laptops or office application logins, so most companies will still need a separate directory or identity provider. Larger companies can no longer use the free edition.3
What customers say
Quoted word for word from public reviews on PeerSpot, retrieved October 22, 2026. Each quote links to the review or post it comes from.
Where it helps
Teleport definitely reduced the risks; we are no longer exposing root-level accounts for people that are meant to have an elevated account.
Teleport has replaced earlier methods like a bastion server or a jump server, which required connecting to physical servers.
Where it falls short
I think it should have less complexity to set up on self-hosted because it is still a difficult process and I spend a lot of time using it on self-host.
While SSO integration works well, deeper out-of-the-box integrations with SIEM and monitoring tools would be beneficial.
Sources
- Teleport, Enterprise Edition pricing guide, accessed October 22, 2026
- AWS Marketplace, Teleport listing, accessed October 22, 2026
- Teleport, Teleport Community Edition will restrict commercial usage starting with version 16, March 8, 2024
- Teleport, Teleport raises $110 million Series C at $1.1 billion valuation, May 3, 2022
- Teleport, Modern infrastructure adopts Infrastructure Identity, February 25, 2025
- Teleport, About us, accessed October 22, 2026
- SaaS Club, The 8-figure open source SaaS playbook with Ev Kontsevoy, episode 480
