OpsCrew, or a DevOps freelancer?
A freelancer brings judgment, custom work and someone to call. OpsCrew brings plans you approve, files you own and checks you can rerun, for free.
The short answer
A DevOps freelancer is the better choice when
- Your setup is unusual: Kubernetes (opens in a new tab), several regions, compliance rules, or an old system to move
- You need judgment on trade-offs that no fixed rule covers, and someone to explain them to your team
- You want someone on call who fixes things in the night, not only an alert
- You need AWS (opens in a new tab), Google Cloud (opens in a new tab) or Azure (opens in a new tab) today: OpsCrew plans them next, but does not support them yet
- The work is inside your app: slow queries, its architecture, its code
OpsCrew is the better choice when
- Your app has a common shape: a web app with a database, workers and cron jobs
- You want to approve every change yourself, as a plan bound to its hash or a pull request
- You want every file in your repository, readable by whoever comes next
- You want checks you can rerun at any hour, for free
- Your budget is small: OpsCrew is free, and you pay only for the server
OpsCrew is alpha software. It is tested live on Hetzner Cloud (opens in a new tab), Contabo (opens in a new tab), a server you already own and an existing Portainer (opens in a new tab); expect breaking changes before 1.0.
Side by side
| Topic | OpsCrew | A DevOps freelancer |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | A known set of jobs done the same way each time: the server, your domain and HTTPS, deploys, hardening and checks. | A person who can do whatever they know how to, including what OpsCrew does not. |
| Judgment | Fixed rules, with a model where judgment helps: reading your app and changing its code. It asks you what it cannot tell. | Experience with situations no rule covers, and advice you can talk through. |
| Your approval | Every change is a plan you see first, with its cost and its hash, or a pull request you merge. | Whatever you agree with them. |
| What you keep | Plain files in your repository: infrastructure code, workflows, reports and a runbook. | What they write down and hand over. |
| Doing it again | Run any check again, at any hour, for free: the scan, secure, verify and drift. | Another booking, at their rate. |
| At night | The scheduled check opens a GitHub (opens in a new tab) issue and can message Slack (opens in a new tab), Discord (opens in a new tab) or ntfy (opens in a new tab). Fixing it is up to you, with a rollback in one command. | If they are on call, they fix it. |
| Your keys | They stay in your own environment. Nothing is sent to OpsCrew. | They need access to your accounts while they work. |
What a freelancer costs
Rates vary with experience, country and the job. One marketplace that publishes them is Arc.
“When you hire DevOps engineers through Arc, they typically charge between $60-100+/hour (USD).”
The two work well together. OpsCrew can do the routine setup, and a freelancer can review its plans and files or take on what OpsCrew does not do. Because every change is a plain file in your repository, they see exactly what was done.
Sources, checked on 6 November 2026
Do the routine part yourself, with every step approved.
Run npx opscrew init in your app’s repository. Nothing is created until you approve a plan and its monthly cost.