Glue vs Backstage

Backstage is a developer portal. Glue is codebase intelligence. Different audiences, different problems.

What Backstage Does

Backstage is a centralized hub for engineers:

• Service catalog (what services exist, who owns them)
• Documentation (runbooks, architecture docs, how-tos)
• Internal developer tools and templates
• CI/CD pipelines and deployments
• Integration with other tools

Best for: Platform teams and engineers who need central visibility into services and infrastructure.

What Glue Does

Glue analyzes code:

• Understands architecture from code itself (not documentation)
• Answers questions about code relationships
• Identifies technical risks
• Estimates implementation effort
• Generates documentation from code

Best for: Product managers and CTOs who need to understand codebase impact on strategy and planning.

The Audience Difference

Backstage: For engineers Glue: For product managers and leadership

When You Need Both

Growing teams often use both:

Backstage: Engineers use it for service management, runbooks, templates Glue: Product teams use it to understand effort and risk

They complement each other. Backstage organizes operations. Glue understands architecture.