infrastructure access

Teleport

Teleport is a infrastructure access product that audits every shell and database session. This profile covers what it does, how it is priced, and where it stops being the right choice.

What the product actually does

Teleport is an access gateway for infrastructure. Instead of distributing SSH keys, database passwords and Kubernetes credentials, users authenticate once and receive short-lived certificates scoped to specific resources. Every session is recorded.

The recording is the part that changes organisational behaviour. When access is auditable by default, the conversation about who can reach production changes from trust to evidence.

How pricing works once you are inside

Teleport Community Edition is open source and covers the core access and recording. The commercial tiers price per infrastructure resource or per seat depending on the edition, and the jump is significant because the commercial product adds the compliance features — long-term session storage, access requests, and the audit integrations.

The decision point is usually session retention. Community Edition records; retaining and searching recordings over a compliance window is the paid feature, and it is genuinely hard to build yourself.

Where it breaks down

Operating it is a real commitment. Teleport is a cluster of services with its own certificate authority, and getting the CA lifecycle wrong locks everyone out. The managed offering exists for exactly this reason.

Integration coverage is broad but not exhaustive. An unusual protocol or an old system without a Teleport integration needs a proxy or stays outside the gateway, which undermines the single-point-of-access model.

What switching costs

Moderate. The access model is portable in principle — short-lived certificates are not proprietary — but the cluster configuration, roles and recording history are Teleport-specific.

Who should not use it

Small teams without a compliance driver. SSH keys in a secret manager cover the same ground with far less operational surface.

Sources

Teleport public documentation and pricing page, read October 2026.