# Fabric vs 8090 Software Factory > Pick Fabric if you want your PRDs, specs and roadmap kept next to your code in Jira and GitHub, free and open source. Pick 8090 if you are a regulated enterprise that wants one closed hosted platform and will pay $200 per user per month for it. Both turn a written product decision into shipped code and keep the reasons. Canonical: https://fabric.pro/fabric-vs-8090 --- ## What 8090 sells Here is what changes for a product manager. In Fabric, your PRD and spec become features on a roadmap, each linked to the decision behind it. You start work on a feature, a coding agent builds it, and your engineers review the pull request it opens. When someone asks why a change was made, the answer and its sources are on the feature. Fabric is Apache-2.0, free with your own model keys, and can run in your own environment. In 8090, business leaders write intent in 8090's own workspace and the platform carries it through five modules, with tokens billed on top and a services arm from $1M a year. 8090 Software Factory is the self-serve product of 8090 Solutions Inc., described on its site as an AI-native SDLC control plane for regulated enterprises. Business leaders define intent in plain English, a living knowledge graph holds the documentation, and every decision is audited. It has five modules: Requirements, Blueprints, Work Orders, Tests and Feedback. Alongside it, 8090 Enterprise is a build-and-host service starting at one million dollars a year. The company's proof points are enterprise modernisation stories, among them reading 18 million lines of Medicare claims code for CMS, and a partnership with EY. Pricing for the self-serve product is $200 per user per month with tokens billed separately, as of September 2026. > From plain language to production. With receipts. 8090 Software Factory product page, September 2026 ## Where the two agree The category is the same and the core promise rhymes. Both hold the team's context in the system rather than in people's heads. Both turn intent into specifications before code. Both keep people in charge of what ships, and both leave a record of who decided what. Both let you bring the coding agent or editor you already use. So the differences are not about whether a software factory is a good idea. They are about who owns it, what it costs, who it is built for, and where the control point sits. ## Where they differ | | Fabric | 8090 Software Factory | | Licence | Apache-2.0. The full code is on GitHub and you can run it yourself. | Closed source, hosted by 8090. | | Price | Free. You bring your own model keys from any of twenty providers. | $200 per user per month, tokens billed separately. Enterprise from $1M a year. | | Built for | Product and engineering teams that already ship, from a start-up to a platform group. | Regulated enterprises, with business leadership as the primary user. | | Where you work | Inside Jira, GitHub, Slack, Notion and your editor, through MCP, the CLI and the API. | In 8090's own workspace, across its five modules. | | Where agents run | On Fabric Harness, an open-source runtime you can build your own agents on. | On 8090's platform, or in your IDE agent pointed at its work orders. | | The control point | A person starts work on a feature before it is built, and reviews and merges its pull request. | Approval of intent and blueprints upstream, before code is written. | | The record | Documents, tickets, decisions and pull requests, with every answer citing its source. | A living knowledge graph with documentation and audit trail. | | Proof | TechFabric runs its own delivery on it: ten people's delivery work now takes three. | Customer stories with CMS and BISSELL; an EY partnership; a Series A. | ## Who should pick which - 01 Pick 8090 if the buyer is the board A regulated enterprise that wants a vendor to own the platform, host it, and stand behind it with a Big Four partner will find that in 8090. The price reflects it. - 02 Pick Fabric if the buyer is the team An engineering organisation that wants to try a software factory this week, keep its data and its keys, run it in its own environment and read the code will find that in Fabric, at no licence cost. - 03 Pick Fabric if you build agents Fabric Harness is the runtime underneath Fabric and it is open. Teams that want their own agents on the same record and the same runtime can build them there. ## What a year costs A team of twenty on 8090 Software Factory pays $48,000 a year in seats before tokens, at the published rate. The same team on Fabric pays its model providers directly, at the rates it already negotiates, and nothing to Fabric. Self-hosting adds the infrastructure you choose to run. The honest caveat is support. 8090's seat includes guided onboarding and standard support. Fabric's free tier is community support and the documentation; TechFabric, the company that builds Fabric, offers paid engineering and support for teams that want it. ## How to try Fabric - 01 Sign up at fabric.pro and add a model key from any provider. There is no card and no trial clock. - 02 Connect a repository and a tracker. Ask Fabric a question about the project and read the sources it cites. - 03 Give one client feature to Fabric: documents, a roadmap entry, then a coding run once you start work on it. Read the pull request with the record attached. - 04 If you would rather run it yourself, clone the repository and start it with Docker Compose or Aspire. It is the same code as fabric.pro. ## Questions ### Is Fabric an alternative to 8090 Software Factory? Yes, for teams that want an open-source software factory they can run themselves. Fabric covers the same delivery loop, from intent to pull request with a full record, under an Apache-2.0 licence and free with your own model keys. 8090 is a closed hosted platform aimed at regulated enterprises. ### Is Software Factory a trademark of 8090? 8090 Software Factory is a registered mark of 8090 Solutions Inc. Fabric uses software factory as the generic name of the category, the way it has been used since the 2004 Microsoft book of that title, and never as a product name. ### Does Fabric have the five modules 8090 has? Fabric covers the same ground in its own shape. The PRD and spec stages carry requirements and architecture decisions, features on the roadmap, synced to Jira, Azure DevOps or GitLab, carry work orders, a coding run turns one into a pull request for a person to review, and every answer and decision is written to the record. There is no separate feedback module; feedback arrives from the tools the team already uses. ### Can Fabric run in a regulated environment? Fabric is self-hostable with Docker Compose or Aspire, supports single sign-on, passkeys and two-factor authentication, keeps tenants apart in the database, and inherits permissions from Databricks Unity Catalog where it runs on Databricks. Your keys and your data stay with you, and nothing trains on them. ### Where do the 8090 facts on this page come from? From 8090's own site on 11 September 2026, using the home page, the Software Factory product page and the pricing page. Prices and features change; check 8090.ai for the current terms.