Open Source Automation Tools: Popular Options & How to Choose the Right One for Your Needs

When looking at the broad landscape of IT automation tools, you’ll find dozens (if not hundreds) of tools that seem like viable solutions to your automation needs. Almost all of those tools can be broken down into two categories: Open source automation tools and commercial automation tools. (Open source automation tools with a commercial offering are still considered open source, even if the commercial edition has a price tag.)

Open source automation tools have plenty of benefits. When reviewing your options, there’s also plenty to consider before choosing the one that’s right for automating tasks and configurations across your infrastructure. Read on for an explanation of why organizations choose open source tools for automating infrastructure and a look at some of the more popular open source automation tools out there.

What are Open Source Automation Tools?

Open source automation tools are software solutions for automating tasks that are created collaboratively by a community of developers and offered to the public for free. Examples of open source IT automation tools include Puppet, Jenkins, Ansible, and Chef.

Open source IT automation tools are used to automate various tasks in the DevOps lifecycle, like testing and deploying software. Some are also well suited to streamline routine infrastructure management tasks (like provisioning and state enforcement).

For a refresher on the function and purpose of IT automation software, read What is IT Automation? (~1300 words, ~7 min. read)

Why Choose Open Source Automation Tools Over Commercial Ones?

Open source automation tools are typically free to use, customizable, and supported by collaborative developer communities. Organizations often use open source software to save money, access new features, and avoid restrictive commercial licenses.

Open source software is known to be collaborative, flexible, and agile in terms of new features.  Users can inspect the source code of open source projects to scan for vulnerabilities and backdoors; large communities contribute new features and updates to the source codebase constantly; and many open source licenses allow users to modify the software and adapt it to their specific needs.

OpenLogic’s 2025 State of Open Source Report identified the top reasons organizations use open source software. Among them were cost reduction, the sense of community, and a desire to innovate:

• No license cost, overall cost reduction (53.33%)
• To reduce vendor lock-in (32.86%)
• Open standards and interoperability (27.62%)
• To reduce development or maintenance costs (22.38%)
• To modernize technology stack (19.05%)
• Community-oriented and transparent (18.57%)
• Access to the latest technologies (17.14%)
• Ability to contribute to, and influence the direction of, open source projects (14.76%)
• Fast moving/constant enhancements, releases, and patches (10.48%)

Open Source Automation Tools: Comparing the Most Popular Options Available

A few of the most popular open source IT automation tools include:

• Puppet
• Chef
• Ansible
• Salt
• CFEngine
• Rudder

Note: For the purposes of this blog, we’ve limited our purview to open source infrastructure automation tools. Specialized automation tools like Chocolatey, Vagrant, Foreman, Cobbler, Prometheus, and others can perform more specific automation tasks, like package management, testing, alerting, provisioning, deploying containers, and scaling. 

*Note: Terraform is no longer open source. It would normally appear on this list of popular open source automation tools, but HashiCorp transitioned to the Business Source License (BSL) for Terraform in August 2023. Learn more about the change in an episode of the Puppet podcast about HashiCorp’s BSL >> 

How to Choose an Open Source IT Automation Tool

You’ve got your criteria and a top-level comparison of open source tools for IT automation. While you’re deliberating between tools to automate tasks and manage your infrastructure configurations, we recommend keeping a few key questions in mind to make sure you make the right choice.

What do you actually need to automate?

To be fair, many automation tools will help alleviate your most immediate pain points like provisioning, troubleshooting, and some scaling. To find the “right” tool — the one that’ll support your infrastructure now and in the long term — you should identify as many automation use cases as possible across your organization to get the full picture of your needs.

Do you just need to save time on a few repetitive IT ops tasks on one platform? Do you need system, OS, and network automation? What about system hardening and compliance audit prep? Predictions can be difficult, but when choosing an automation solution, try to look beyond the starting point. You’ll probably find more use cases for infrastructure automation than you initially thought.

What does your infrastructure look like today, and what do you want it to look like in the future?

Some open source IT automation tools can be great for automating individual kinds of tasks. For example, the automation tools that come with your cloud platform (like AWS Config and Azure Automation) can be helpful for the infrastructure you’ve got hosted there. But tools like those are often fairly limited in scope and scale, and they only work for infrastructure running on that specific platform.

If your organization’s goals reach beyond the scale of your current IT (like if you need to manage infrastructure across more than one environment), those tools will become more of a stumbling block than a time-saver. Which brings us to our next point…

Will you need to automate across complex environments?

In a predominantly digital business world, IT setups rarely stay small or simple. A lot of IT has been trending toward migrating to cloud, splitting across multiple clouds, and mixing deployments in a hybrid cloud approach. Then there’s cloud repatriation, a counter-trend where organizations rework their cloud deployments to control costs and redefine their ideal cloud mix (driven in part by the need for specialized hardware for AI workloads).

Your choice of open source tools for IT automation should consider the complexities of cross-deployed infrastructure and the challenges that come with maintaining consistency across systems and environments (including automation, configuration management, and orchestration). If you’re already at the point of needing to streamline tasks with automation software, you’re probably on track for growth, which means more sophisticated deployments in the future.

How much time and effort can you spend to implement and manage automation?

Open source automation tools require specialized skills to manage and maintain: developing an automation architecture, defining configurations and scripts, testing, integrating, and a whole lot more. And that’s just to get automation set up and going in the first place. Then there’s ongoing monitoring, optimization, training, documentation, change management, maintenance, and knowledge transfer (if you should lose your SME or champion to turnover).

Even if you’ve got someone with that expertise on staff, they're likely focused on keeping your systems secure, stable, and compliant, rather than optimizing and finding new ways to drive value from your tooling. Open source IT automation tools with limited use cases can be faster to set up and implement than enterprise automation solutions, but their limited scope means you’ll be spending more time managing tooling instead of getting a comprehensive, unified view or understanding of your infrastructure. Which leads us to our next question:

What happens when you need more than open source automation tools can provide?

Open source automation tools can be good starting points for automation, and some organizations choose to invest in building, staffing, and maintaining them in-house for customizability and hands-on control. But there's a sort of natural ceiling built into many open source automation tools. Consider:

• Community-supported open source tools often can’t provide the security guarantees and support you need to meet SLAs and do business in regulated industries.
• With open source automation tools, you’re often left to sift through forums for support, hoping someone has already solved your problem.
• Many open source automation tools require specialized skill sets, meaning hiring can be tough and turnover can create critical skill gaps.
• Scaling automation with open source tools typically requires heavy customization, which can mean putting significant resources into developing the tool to match your use cases.
• A lack of usability features (like a web interface, self-service integrations, and AI-powered automation capabilities) can make it more difficult to manage automation with open source tools, especially if your infrastructure includes a mixture of operating systems and deployment modes.

Why Puppet is a Great Automation Tool to Start With

Puppet automation is free to use.

Puppet’s open source roots run deep. Open Source Puppet is completely free to use, and Puppet Core has free license options for developers and comes with the assurance of hardened, signed binaries and vendor backing.

Puppet has a huge number of use cases.

With the power of Puppet, the sky’s the limit for your infrastructure automation: Application delivery, hybrid cloud management, compliance, configuration management, patching, process automation. If that sounds daunting, don’t worry — the Puppet Forge has thousands of free modules that help automate common tasks and integrate with your stack. And the use cases of the Puppet Enterprise platform go far beyond automation, enabling better infrastructure operations with advanced enterprise-grade capabilities.

Puppet has stood the test of time.

Puppet is one of the most widely used open source automation and configuration management tools out there. It sets the bar for better DevOps, from tooling to thought leadership and pushing DevOps further than anyone thought it could go. The Forrester Wave™: Infrastructure Automation, Q1 2023 said that Puppet’s products “stand out,” and that the roadmap and company vision “align well with changing needs in the industry.” (We agree.)

Puppet can support you at any step of your automation journey.

There are plenty of open source automation tools available, including Open Source Puppet, that are well suited for admins or small teams testing out automation — but Puppet offers automation that scales with your needs. When you need more from your open source automation — more support, more secure releases, greater ease of use, more complex infrastructure, more use cases — Puppet is ready to support your long-term automation journey.

• Puppet Core offers secure, stable releases of Puppet (each signed, supported, and rigorously tested with guaranteed SLAs) and includes automated compliance enforcement of CIS Benchmarks and DISA STIGs.
• The Puppet Enterprise platform is the ultimate solution for modern enterprises. It increases the efficiency of IT teams in the modern enterprise, with numerous productivity enhancements, sensible integrations, and use cases that open source automation tools can’t match.

Every edition of Puppet is built on the same open source foundation, and each has automation in its DNA. The Puppet Enterprise platform builds on the popular capabilities and support that customers love and enables use cases for enterprise-grade infrastructure management. Capabilities of the Puppet Enterprise platform include vulnerability remediation, observability, impact analysis, and compliance management — all managed via an intuitive web interface for greater efficiency, improved security, and ease of use. Plus, our Professional Services team makes migrating your configurations a snap, whether it’s already managed by Puppet or you use another infrastructure automation tool.

“[T]here are some huge benefits we’ve gained by moving to Puppet Enterprise.”

Lucas Crownover, SysAdmin, University of Oregon Information Services

Read case study >>

Interested in starting your automation journey with Puppet? Find your perfect starting point by downloading our free guide to compare each Puppet option (from Open Source Puppet to the Puppet Enterprise platform).

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