Configuration Management Tools

Chef vs Salt Project

Compare Chef and Salt Project side-by-side. See feature differences and pricing in the Configuration Management Tools category.

Chef

by Progress Software

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Pricing: Business $59 and Enterprise $189 per node per year, SaaS or self-managed; Enterprise Plus by quote. Free non-production license and 30-day trial.

Chef is a configuration management and compliance automation platform from Progress for server, desktop and network fleets, built on an open-source engine.

15 /17 features Full profile

Salt Project

by Broadcom

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Pricing: Free and open source under the Apache License 2.0; self-hosted, with community support on Discord and GitHub.

Salt Project is an open source configuration management and remote execution tool for self-hosted server fleets, maintained by Broadcom under Apache 2.0.

11 /17 features Full profile

Feature Comparison

Configuration Management Tools features side-by-side

Feature	Chef 15/17 features	Salt Project 11/17 features
Declarative desired-state enforcement Hosts are described by their intended end state and the tool converges them to it on every run.	Yes	Yes
Idempotent configuration runs Re-applying the same configuration to an already-compliant node reports zero changes.	Yes	Yes
Agentless execution over SSH and WinRM The controller connects to nodes directly, with no resident agent to install or upgrade.	Yes	Yes
Agent-based scheduled convergence Nodes run an agent that checks in on a schedule, pulls their catalog and applies it locally.	Yes	Yes
Node drift detection and remediation Reports nodes whose live state departs from the declared one and can correct them automatically.	Yes	Yes
No-op dry run of pending changes A simulated run lists exactly what would change on each node without applying anything.	Yes	Yes
Community module registry Roles, modules or cookbooks maintained by the community can be installed from a public hub.	Yes	No
Dynamic inventory from cloud providers Node lists are pulled live from cloud and virtualisation APIs rather than kept in a static file.	No	No
Linux, Windows and network device management One tool manages Linux and Windows hosts and network devices such as switches and firewalls.	Yes	Yes
Encrypted secrets in configuration data Sensitive values inside playbooks or hierarchical data are stored encrypted at rest.	Yes	Yes
Rolling orchestration across node batches Runs execute across many nodes in ordered batches, with a stop-on-failure threshold.	Yes	No
Web console with node inventory A browser UI lists nodes, shows their last run status and lets operators launch jobs.	Yes	No
Role-based access on the control server Permissions on inventories, credentials and job templates are assigned by role.	Yes	Yes
CIS and STIG compliance profiles Ready-made benchmark profiles audit and enforce hardening baselines on managed nodes.	Yes	No
Event-driven automation triggers Alerts or webhooks from monitoring and ticketing tools can start a remediation job automatically.	Yes	Yes
Change audit trail per node Every applied change is logged with who ran it, when, and which resources were modified.	No	No
Open source configuration engine The core engine is open source; the paid product adds the console, content and support.	Yes	Yes
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