generated: '2026-08-29'
method: searched
source: https://www.groundcover.com/pricing and https://play.groundcover.com
provider: Groundcover
providerId: groundcover
description: >-
  groundcover offers two ways to exercise the product before buying, but neither is a developer
  sandbox in the payments sense: there are no test-mode credentials, no test/live key prefixes, no
  fixture data and no time simulation. The Playground is a hosted, pre-populated instance of the UI;
  the Free plan is a real deployment against real clusters with a 12-hour retention window.
surfaces:
  - name: Playground
    type: hosted-demo
    url: https://play.groundcover.com
    http_status: 200
    probed: '2026-08-29'
    signup_required: false
    description: >-
      A hosted instance of the groundcover console populated with demo telemetry, linked from the
      site as "Try Playground" / "Launch Playground". Explores the UI, gcQL, dashboards and Agent
      Mode without connecting a cluster.
    api_access: >-
      Not documented as an API surface. No published base URL, key issuance or endpoint for
      programmatic access to the Playground.
  - name: Free plan
    type: live-tier
    url: https://www.groundcover.com/start
    price: $0
    signup_required: true
    credit_card_required: false
    description: >-
      Free forever, BYOC deployment mode, 12-hour data retention, Slack Community support. This is
      the closest thing to a developer trial of the API: a free workspace can mint a service account
      and an API key and call api.groundcover.com for real.
    deployment_mode: BYOC
test_credentials:
  published: false
  note: >-
    No test API keys, sandbox keys, key prefixes distinguishing test from live, seeded fixture
    objects or trigger endpoints are documented. Every key groundcover issues is a live key against
    a real workspace, and the docs state keys are only valid for the environment that issued them.
time_simulation:
  supported: false
  note: No test clocks or time-travel facility; queries run over real ingested telemetry.
self_hosted_alternative:
  description: >-
    onPrem and airGapped deployments are the isolation story for regulated buyers rather than a
    sandbox — they run their own API URL and issue their own keys, so a self-hosted environment can
    serve as an integration target under the customer's control.
  docs: https://docs.groundcover.com/architecture/overview