PickYourTechPickYourTech home
Argo CD logo

Argo CD

GitOps-powered continuous delivery for Kubernetes, fully declarative.

CI/CD Pipelines

Argo CD automates Kubernetes application deployments using Git as the single source of truth, offering declarative sync, visual UI, and audit‑ready lifecycle management.

Argo CD banner

Overview

Overview

Argo CD implements GitOps principles to keep Kubernetes clusters in sync with a Git repository that holds the desired state of applications. By treating Git as the single source of truth, it automatically detects drift and reconciles live resources, providing auditable, version‑controlled deployments without custom pipelines. The platform offers a web UI, CLI, and API, allowing operators to visualize application health, roll back to previous commits, and manage multi‑cluster environments with fine‑grained RBAC.

Who benefits

Teams building cloud‑native services, platform engineers managing multiple clusters, and DevOps groups seeking repeatable, declarative delivery workflows find Argo CD valuable. It integrates with Helm, Kustomize, Jsonnet, and plain YAML manifests, and can be installed via Helm charts or raw manifests, fitting into existing CI pipelines or operating as a standalone continuous delivery engine.

Highlights

Declarative GitOps sync with automated drift detection
Real‑time UI and CLI for application health monitoring
Support for Helm, Kustomize, Jsonnet, and plain manifests
Multi‑cluster and RBAC‑aware deployment management

Pros

  • Declarative, Git‑based state management
  • Automatic drift detection and self‑healing
  • Rich UI with real‑time status
  • Strong multi‑cluster and RBAC support

Considerations

  • Steep learning curve for GitOps newcomers
  • Requires Kubernetes expertise to configure
  • Limited built‑in secret management (relies on external tools)
  • Complexity grows with large number of applications

Managed products teams compare with

When teams consider Argo CD, these hosted platforms usually appear on the same shortlist.

Buddy logo

Buddy

CI/CD automation platform focused on easy pipeline design and fast deployments for developers

Buildkite logo

Buildkite

Scalable CI/CD platform that runs pipelines on your own infrastructure with a centralized web UI for build management

CircleCI logo

CircleCI

CI/CD platform to build, test, and deploy code automatically

Looking for a hosted option? These are the services engineering teams benchmark against before choosing open source.

Fit guide

Great for

  • Organizations adopting GitOps for Kubernetes
  • Teams needing auditable, version‑controlled deployments
  • Platform engineers managing multiple clusters
  • Enterprises requiring RBAC‑driven access control

Not ideal when

  • Projects without Kubernetes as target runtime
  • Small scripts or single‑node deployments
  • Teams preferring traditional CI pipelines over GitOps
  • Environments lacking Git as source of truth

How teams use it

Production application rollout

Deploys new releases from Git, automatically syncs to clusters, and rolls back on failure.

Preview environments for pull requests

Creates temporary Kubernetes namespaces per PR, enabling developers to test changes in an isolated, reproducible environment.

Multi‑cluster fleet management

Synchronizes the same application version across several clusters with cluster‑specific overrides, ensuring consistent configuration.

Infrastructure as code for Helm charts

Manages Helm releases declaratively via Git, tracking chart versions and values alongside application code.

Tech snapshot

Go81%
TypeScript14%
Lua3%
SCSS1%
Shell1%
Makefile1%

Tags

continuous-deploymentkubernetesgitopspipelinehacktoberfestjsonnethelmkustomizeci-cddevopscicdcontinuous-deliverydockerargo-cdargocd

Frequently asked questions

How does Argo CD differ from traditional CI/CD tools?

Argo CD focuses on continuous delivery by continuously reconciling the live cluster state with the desired state stored in Git, without requiring build pipelines.

Can Argo CD be installed on an existing Kubernetes cluster?

Yes, it can be deployed using Helm charts or raw manifests onto any reachable Kubernetes cluster.

What Git providers are supported?

Argo CD works with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps, and any generic Git server accessible over HTTPS or SSH.

How does Argo CD handle secret management?

Secrets are typically managed outside Argo CD using tools like Sealed Secrets, HashiCorp Vault, or external secret operators; Argo CD syncs references to those resources.

Is there a way to automate application creation?

Yes, the ApplicationSet controller can generate multiple Application resources from templates, enabling batch or PR‑driven deployments.

Project at a glance

Active
Visit siteView repo
Stars
21,776
Watchers
21,776
Forks
6,742
LicenseApache-2.0
Repo age7 years old
Last commit15 hours ago
Primary languageGo

Last synced 13 hours ago