Ansible vs Puppet

Compare Ansible vs Puppet for configuration management. Discover which automation tool best fits your needs.

Ansible and Puppet are both configuration management tools with fundamentally different architectures. Ansible uses an agentless, push-based model communicating over SSH, making it easy to get started with no software to install on managed nodes. You write YAML playbooks, run a command, and changes are applied immediately. Puppet uses an agent-based, pull-based model where a puppet-agent daemon runs on each managed node, periodically checking in with a Puppet server for catalog updates. Puppet uses its own declarative DSL (based on Ruby) which has a steeper learning curve but enables powerful abstractions. Ansible is faster to adopt, requires less infrastructure, and is more versatile (configuration management plus orchestration plus provisioning). Puppet offers continuous enforcement, automatic drift correction, and a mature reporting ecosystem. For teams that need strict compliance and continuous configuration enforcement, Puppet is a strong choice. For teams that value simplicity, quick results, and multi-purpose automation, Ansible is often preferred.