Free Ansible Alternatives

The best free alternative to Ansible is Puppet, which is also Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 50 alternatives to Ansible and many of them is free so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting free alternatives to Ansible are Salt, Chef, pyinfra and Nix Package Manager.

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Alternatives list

  1. Puppet icon
     53 likes

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

    Cost / License

    • Freemium
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • Online
     
  2. Salt icon
     48 likes

    Salt is a powerful remote execution manager that can be used to administer and provision servers in a fast and efficient way.

    37 Salt alternatives

    Cost / License

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
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    1
    Salt vs Ansible Comments
    psi4ick
    Positive
    0

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

    • 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

    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

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
    • BSD
     
    |
    1
    Chef vs Ansible Comments
    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.
    • Chef is Free and Open SourceAnsible is Freemium and Open Source
  4. pyinfra icon
     13 likes

    pyinfra automates infrastructure super fast at massive scale. It can be used for ad-hoc command execution, service deployment, configuration management and more.

    9 pyinfra alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source (MIT)

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     
    |
    5
    pyinfra vs Ansible Comments
    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.

    3 of 5 comments
    • pyinfra is Free and Open SourceAnsible is Freemium and Open Source
    • pyinfra is LightweightAnsible is not according to our users
  5. 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...

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
    • BSD
     
    |
    1
    Nix Package Manager vs Ansible Comments
    Guest
    Positive
    0

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

    Review by a new / low-activity user.
    • 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
     20 likes

    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.

    18 Terraform alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Proprietary

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
    |
    2
    Terraform vs Ansible Comments
    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.
    • Terraform is Free and ProprietaryAnsible is Freemium and Open Source
  7. OpenTofu icon
     6 likes

    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.

    18 OpenTofu alternatives

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Linux
    • Windows
     
  8. Fabric icon
     21 likes

    Fabric is a Python library and command-line tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks.

    25 Fabric alternatives

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
    • BSD
     
    |
    1
    Fabric vs Ansible Comments
    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.

    • Fabric is Free and Open SourceAnsible is Freemium and Open Source
  9. Pulumi icon
     12 likes

    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.

    16 Pulumi alternatives

    Cost / License

    Platforms

    • Mac
    • Windows
    • Linux
     
  10. 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

    Platforms

    • Mac
     
  11.  5 likes

    Crowbar is an Open Source platform for server provisioning and deployment from bare metal. It provides server discovery, firmware upgrades, and operating system installation using PXE Boot. It deploys applications on top of functioning operating systems using whatever config...

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Application type

    Platforms

    • Linux
     
  12. Uyuni icon
     1 like

    Uyuni is a solution for organizations that require absolute control over maintenance and package deployment on their servers. It lets you manage large sets of Linux systems and keep them upto date, with automated software management, asset management, and system provisioning.

    Cost / License

    • Free
    • Open Source

    Platforms

    • Linux
     
12 of 44 Ansible alternatives