Ansible Alternatives

Ansible is described as 'Radically simple IT automation engine that automates cloud provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, intra-service orchestration, and many other IT needs' and is a popular server management tool in the system & hardware category. There are more than 50 alternatives to Ansible for a variety of platforms, including Linux, Mac, Windows, Web-based and BSD apps. The best Ansible alternative is Puppet, which is both free and Open Source. Other great apps like Ansible are Salt, Chef, pyinfra and Nix Package Manager.

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Alternatives list

  1. Puppet icon
     53 likes
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    Puppet Data Center Automation Solution helps you save time, gain visibility into your server environment, and ensure consistency across your IT infrastructure.

    46 Puppet alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Freemium
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Online
     
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    19
    • Almost everyone thinks Puppet is a great Ansible alternative.

    • Puppet is the most popular Web-based, Windows, Mac & Linux alternative to Ansible.

    • Puppet is the most popular Open Source & free alternative to Ansible.

    • Puppet is Freemium and Open SourceAnsible is also Freemium and Open Source
  2. Salt icon
     48 likes
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    Salt is a powerful remote execution manager that can be used to administer and provision servers in a fast and efficient way.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
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    1
    13
    Comments about Salt as an Alternative to Ansible
    psi4ick
    Positive
    0

    Saltstack is stateful and supports features allowing to manage thousands of systems simulataneously

    Ansible Icon
    Salt icon
    • Almost everyone thinks Salt is a great Ansible alternative.

    • Salt is Free and Open SourceAnsible is Freemium and Open Source
    • Salt is LightweightAnsible is not according to our users
  3. Chef icon
     31 likes
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    Chef is an open source systems integration framework built to bring the benefits of configuration management to your entire infrastructure. You write source code to describe how you want each part of your infrastructure to be built, then apply those descriptions to your servers.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • BSD
     
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    1
    14
    Comments about Chef as an Alternative to Ansible
    Guest
    Positive
    0

    Jenkins and the other platforms listed are more build tools rather than a server configuration tool.

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    Ansible Icon
    Chef icon
    • Almost everyone thinks Chef is a great Ansible alternative.

    • Chef is Free and Open SourceAnsible is Freemium and Open Source
  4. pyinfra icon
     13 likes
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    pyinfra automates infrastructure super fast at massive scale. It can be used for ad-hoc command execution, service deployment, configuration management and more.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     
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    5
    15
    Comments about pyinfra as an Alternative to Ansible
    Top Positive Comment
    nogajun
    0

    It is faster than Ansible and allows you to write configurations more concisely.

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    adabru
    Positive
    1

    I don't need to wait as long for pyinfra as I did for ansible. Furthermore as it is everything python, I can extend its logging if needed. I had logging problems with ansible.

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    Ben Pro
    Positive
    1

    KISS spirit, very powerful and easy to learn.

    Show more comments
    3 of 5 comments
    Ansible Icon
    pyinfra icon
    • Almost everyone thinks pyinfra is a great Ansible alternative.

    • pyinfra is Free and Open SourceAnsible is Freemium and Open Source
    • pyinfra is LightweightAnsible is not according to our users
  5. Copy a direct link to this comment to your clipboard

    Nix is a powerful package manager for macOS, Linux and other Unix systems that makes package management reliable and reproducible. It provides atomic upgrades and rollbacks, side-by-side installation of multiple versions of a package, multi-user package management and easy setup...

    53 Nix Package Manager alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
    • BSD
     
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    1
    Comments about Nix Package Manager as an Alternative to Ansible
    Guest
    Positive
    0

    Solves many of the same problems but with a different philosophy.

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    Ansible Icon
    Nix Package Manager icon
    • Nix Package Manager is Free and Open SourceAnsible is Freemium and Open Source
    • Nix Package Manager is Privacy focused and LightweightAnsible is not according to our users
  6. Terraform icon
     19 likes
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    Tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. Terraform can manage existing and popular service providers as well as custom in-house solutions.

    17 Terraform alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
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    2
    Comments about Terraform as an Alternative to Ansible
    Nathaniel Waisbrot
    Positive
    1

    Terraform is primarilly for creating infrastructure and Ansible is primarilly for configuring machines. Both offer tools in the other's domain and both offerings are disappointing there.

    I've been fairly happy using Terraform to create VMs and then trigger Ansible to configure them.

    Guest
    Negative
    -3

    Terraform is for provisioning cloud devices, and Ansible is for bare-metal automation.

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    Ansible Icon
    Terraform icon
    • Some users think Terraform is a great Ansible alternative, some don't.

    • Terraform is Free and ProprietaryAnsible is Freemium and Open Source
  7. OpenTofu icon
     6 likes
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    OpenTofu is an OSS tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. OpenTofu can manage existing and popular service providers as well as custom in-house solutions.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
    • Windows
     
  8. Rudder icon
     27 likes
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    Rudder is a solution for automating your IT infrastructure to ensure security, reliability and compliance of your systems, whatever the OS. Gain instant visibility of IT compliance and benefit from continuous remediation to ensure an environment well configured and secured.

    13 Rudder alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Subscription
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Windows
    • Linux
    • SUSE Linux Enterprise
    • Self-Hosted
    • CentOS
    • Ubuntu
    • Debian
    • Raspberry Pi OS
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
    • Slackware
     
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    6
    • Most users think Rudder is a great Ansible alternative.

    • Rudder is the most popular Self-Hosted alternative to Ansible.

    • Rudder is the most popular commercial alternative to Ansible.

    • Rudder is Paid and Open SourceAnsible is Freemium and Open Source
    • Rudder is LightweightAnsible is not according to our users
  9. Copy a direct link to this comment to your clipboard

    Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an end-to-end automation platform to configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate advanced workflows. It includes resources to create, manage, and scale across the entire enterprise.

    Cost / License

    • Subscription
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Software as a Service (SaaS)
    • Microsoft Azure
    • Amazon Web Services
    • Google Cloud Platform
     
    • Ansible Automation Platform is the most popular SaaS alternative to Ansible.

    • Ansible Automation Platform is Paid and ProprietaryAnsible is Freemium and Open Source
  10. Fabric icon
     21 likes
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    Fabric is a Python library and command-line tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     
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    1
    7
    Comments about Fabric as an Alternative to Ansible
    2xM
    Positive
    1

    Only requires SSH and if you're familiar to Python and the command line, you know everything to start automation of administrative tasks on remote hosts.

    Ansible Icon
    Fabric icon
    • Most users think Fabric is a great Ansible alternative.

    • Fabric is Free and Open SourceAnsible is Freemium and Open Source
  11. Pulumi icon
     12 likes
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    Pulumi is a cloud development platform. Replace YAML and DSLs with pure code. Code, deploy, manage cloud apps to AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, using JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Go.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  12. Copy a direct link to this comment to your clipboard

    Describe your MacOS development environment using JSON configurations. Codify will do the rest. Create reproducible, shareable, and consistent environments using Codify, individually and for a team.

    Cost / License

    • Free Personal
    • Proprietary

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
     
12 of 56 Ansible alternatives