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Alternatives

Chef alternatives

Chef is policy-as-code for servers: write cookbooks, converge nodes, and audit compliance with Chef 360. It is a poor fit if you need contracts, SSO, or a named vendor SLA. Here are 4 tools on Toolora that do a similar job, 3 of them free or with a free tier, and what each one does differently.

Chef profileOpen source + paid Chef 360 and enterprise
  1. 01

    Puppet

    PaidToolora score84

    Desired-state automation for servers, cloud, and compliance across hybrid infrastructure

    Instead of Chef: Paid, where Chef has a free option.

    Paid Core, Advanced, and Enterprise; demo on request

    Get it here↗Compare with Chef
  2. 02

    Terraform

    Open sourceToolora score90

    Infrastructure as code: declare cloud resources in files and apply the same plan every time

    Instead of Chef: Also covers devops and iac.

    Open source + HCP Terraform free and paid plans

    Get it here↗Compare with Chef
  3. 03

    Pulumi

    Open sourceToolora score88

    Infrastructure as code in real languages: declare cloud resources in TypeScript or Python and apply the same stack every time

    Instead of Chef: Also covers devops and iac.

    Open source + Pulumi Cloud paid Team and Enterprise

    Get it here↗Compare with Chef
  4. 04

    Buildkite

    FreeToolora score86

    CI that runs builds on your machines or theirs, with pipelines as code

    Instead of Chef: Also covers devops.

    Free developer tier + paid plans

    Get it here↗Compare with Chef

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