LaunchDarkly vs Split (Harness FME) - Which Should You Pick in 2026?

Here’s the first thing to know, because it changes the whole comparison: Split isn’t a standalone product anymore. Harness acquired it, completed the deal on 11 June 2024, and rebranded it to Harness FME - Feature Management and Experimentation. The split.io pricing page now redirects to harness.io. So “LaunchDarkly vs Split” is really “LaunchDarkly vs a module inside the Harness DevOps platform.”

That reframing matters, and it’s the thread running through this whole comparison. Let me break it down.

The short version

	LaunchDarkly	Harness FME (Split)
What it is	Dedicated feature-management platform	Flags module inside the Harness DevOps platform
Pricing	Service connections + MAU, ~$72k median (Vendr)	Enterprise contact-sales, bundled into Harness
Self-host	No - proprietary SaaS	No
Standalone?	Yes	No longer - absorbed into Harness
Best for	Teams wanting the deepest standalone flag tooling	Teams already buying the Harness platform

LaunchDarkly: the deepest standalone tool

LaunchDarkly is the category’s capability leader, and it’s still its own focused product. It has the deepest targeting rules, around 38 SDKs, and progressive delivery with guarded releases that automatically roll back when a metric goes bad - genuinely best-in-class.

Its gotcha is the bill. It charges on service connections ($10/mo each) plus client-side MAU ($8.33 per 1,000), and it bills on your highest-volume context kind, so devices can dwarf users. Vendr puts the median contract around $72,000/yr, ranging $19,500 to $165,700, and renewals are widely reported to jump. You’re paying premium prices for the best standalone tool. See the full breakdown on the LaunchDarkly review and our LaunchDarkly pricing decode.

Harness FME: powerful, but no longer standalone

The Split engine was always well-regarded, especially for experimentation - it pairs flags with real statistical testing. That capability carries into Harness FME, and Harness itself is a serious, well-funded company ($240M Series E in December 2025 at a $5.5B valuation).

The catch is what the acquisition did to it. Standalone Split pricing is gone; FME is now an enterprise contact-sales module inside the Harness platform. Adopting it means adopting Harness’s platform direction, and existing Split users carry real repricing and migration risk as the product is folded in. If you want a tool whose only job is feature flags, that’s the trade-off you’re weighing.

LaunchDarkly vs Split: which should you pick?

• You want the deepest standalone flag platform - LaunchDarkly. It’s more expensive, but it’s a focused product with the best targeting and guarded releases, and it isn’t a module in someone’s larger suite.
• You’re already buying (or want) the Harness DevOps platform - Harness FME makes sense, because flags become one integrated part of your CI/CD/experimentation stack rather than a separate vendor.
• You were on Split and are being repriced into Harness - this is the moment to evaluate alternatives rather than default into the bundle. See our Split alternatives and LaunchDarkly alternatives.
• Price and experimentation matter more than depth - Statsig makes flag and config checks unlimited and free and has the strongest experimentation engine in the category, though weigh its September 2025 OpenAI acquisition into a long-term bet.
• You need open source or self-hosting - neither of these fits; look at the open-source options instead.

The honest bottom line: LaunchDarkly wins if you want the best focused flag tool and can absorb the price. Harness FME wins only if the platform bundle is where you’re already headed. And if the Split acquisition is what pushed you to this page, treat it as a prompt to shop the whole field, not just these two.

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Pricing and features verified against launchdarkly.com and harness.io on 26 July 2026. Feature-flag pricing changes often - we re-verify regularly. Third-party contract figures (Vendr) and acquisition details are attributed in prose.