Comparing Feature Flag Tools
I have been making plans to start another project and wanted to take advantage of feature flags in my releases. Feature flags are invaluable in a development environment because they allow developers to release new features incrementally, test them with specific user segments, and toggle them on or off without deploying new code. This enables safer releases, quicker iterations, and easy rollbacks if something goes wrong - all while minimizing risk and ensuring smooth user experiences. I am hoping to get faster iterations between releases for my personal projects. In short, I am really just trying to improve the overall devops process for my personal projects.
I am most familiar with LaunchDarkly and Unleash, but I wanted to explore other options. Since this is a personal project, cost is a significant factor. I am focusing on free services available for individuals or small teams. Additionally, I am looking for cloud-hosted, managed services as I want to avoid adding a local feature flag service to my routine maintenance tasks. I do not anticipate heavy traffic to the sites and tools I am building, so I am not overly concerned about usage limitations on free plans.
After conducting some research, I added Statsig, Flagsmith, ConfigCat, and GrowthBook to my list of options. Unfortunately, I had to drop Unleash from my list because they require self-hosting at the free level. This removes an open-source option, though open source was not a critical requirement for me. All the remaining tools provide a Python SDK. Comparing free plans is not straightforward, as each tool offers unique features and limitations. Below is a summary of the key points:
| Feature | LaunchDarkly | Statsig | Flagsmith | ConfigCat | GrowthBook |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Team size | unlimited | 5 team members | 1 team member | 3 team members | unlimited |
| Projects | 1 | - | 1 | 1 | - |
| Environments | 3 | - | unlimited | 2 | unlimited |
| Limits | 5 service connections, 1K contexts, 10K experimentation keys |
2M events/month, 50K session replays/month |
50K requests/month | unlimited MAUs, 20 GB/month |
unlimited |
| Feature flags | yes | unlimited | unlimited | 10 | unlimited |
| Experimentation | yes | yes | limited | no | yes |
| Analytics | built-in | built-in | limited | no | built-in |
| Python SDK | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes |
I decided to remove Flagsmith from my list because it only allows one user per project. There is a strong possibility that I would want to share access in the future. The jump to a paid account at $45 per month was simply too steep for me. Since I am already very familiar with LaunchDarkly, this leaves Statsig, ConfigCat, and GrowthBook as the tools I plan to explore further.
As a next step, I will sign up for the free plans offered by each of these services and conduct some brief testing. Through this process, I hope to identify the tool that best aligns with my project's needs, balancing functionality, ease of use, and scalability, while also getting familiar with a new tool. Stay tuned for updates on my findings!
