Nomad

Nomad runs containers, VMs, and standalone executables across a cluster of servers without the complexity of Kubernetes. It's a workload orchestrator: you tell it 'run 3 copies of this service' and it handles placement, restarts, rolling updates, and health checks.

What's free: The Nomad binary is free to download and use. Source-available under BSL 1.1 (same license change as Terraform). All core scheduling, service mesh (Consul integration), and multi-region features work without paying.

Nomad's pitch is simplicity. A single binary, no etcd, no API server fleet. Just nomad agent on your nodes. You can go from zero to a running cluster in 30 minutes. It handles Docker containers, Java JARs, raw executables, even Windows services. That flexibility is rare.

The catch: the BSL 1.1 license means it's not truly open source anymore. You can use it freely but competitors can't build products on it. The ecosystem is a fraction of Kubernetes' size. Fewer tutorials, fewer integrations, fewer people who know it. And while it's simpler than K8s, 'simpler' still means distributed systems complexity. You'll want Consul for service discovery and Vault for secrets, pulling you deeper into the HashiCorp ecosystem.