#11 of 28 infrastructure automation tools · Updated October 2026
Puppet review 2026
Puppet (Puppet Core and Puppet Enterprise) · Gated builds, portfolio pull
Puppet ranks #11 of 28 infrastructure automation tools in the Infrastructure Automation Ledger 2026, with a Ledger Index of 57 out of 100. Puppet kept shipping while Perforce moved its builds behind an EULA in 2025; the engine's depth is intact, and the commercial terms changed most in this group.
Scores
Source: Infrastructure Automation Ledger 2026, edition 2026-10-16. How each score works: methodology.
Pros
- Configuration management depth4.5/5
- Language and authoring4/5
- Scale and control plane4/5
- Security and compliance4/5
Cons
- Provisioning breadth2/5
- Bare metal and day-2 operations2.5/5
What the Ledger says
Puppet's engine still scores as high on configuration depth as any tool in this Ledger, and the commercial terms around it changed more than any other product here between November 2024 and August 2026. Supported builds left the public repositories in February 2025, the free tier became a 25-node development licence under an EULA, the AI features sit in a new top edition, and the support model shortened to Latest and Latest minus 1. Capability kept rising through that period with Edge, vulnerability remediation and Infra Assistant. A buyer should read the Puppet Core EULA against their own use and node count before standardising, and compare the per-node quote with the cost of running OpenVox with partner support.
Puppet ships a code assistant, an operator assistant and an official MCP server, all inside the top edition and all within one year of their announcement. The MCP server exposes documentation and entity lookups with PE API keys; it has no published guardrail or audit model, so it stays at the preview anchor.
Capability by area
Buying, lock-in and release record
Buying and licence (commercial risk)(lower is better)
- Price and licence volatility4
- Public packages replaced by EULA-gated Puppet Core in February 2025 with a 25-node free cap; support model changed in 2026-08
- Purchase constraints3
- Free tier is development and test only up to 25 nodes; commercial licences by quote, no list prices
- Channel and access4
- Forge account, MFA and API key needed to download even the free tier; patches only in Core and PE builds; partner terms not found
- Owner stability3
- Perforce, private-equity backed, since 2022-05-18; about 15% of the Portland staff laid off in August 2022 (secondary source)
- Cost of staying supported3.5
- Every Core minor must be taken to stay supported; PE Latest gets 12 months of full maintenance
Technical lock-in(lower is better)
- Formats2.5
- Puppet DSL and Hiera are documented text formats, specific to Puppet and OpenVox
- Export path2.5
- OpenVox is a drop-in replacement; no converter to other tools
- Stack coupling1
- Any OS; own server, PuppetDB and PostgreSQL
- Hardware / cloud coupling0.5
- None
- Skills and tooling coupling2.5
- Puppet and Ruby skills, less common than Ansible
Release credibility
- Cadence3.5
- A Puppet Core minor every 6 to 10 weeks since 2025-11 and PE roughly monthly; the lifecycle page gives projected months, not dates
- Roadmap transparency2
- Release notes public without login; no public roadmap; the public repository stopped at 8.10.0 on 2024-10-22
- Say-do3
- Infra Assistant, Edge and Core 9 shipped; PE 2026.0 came about two months after the August projection; the Ecosystem Advisory Board of 2024-11 was not found
- Velocity3.5
- Edge, Infra Assistant, vulnerability remediation and a Ruby 4 baseline within two years
- Lifecycle stability2
- Each Core minor supersedes the previous; the support model changed to Latest and Latest minus 1 on 2026-08-06; open source Puppet 7 ended 2025-04-30 with no public 8.x builds after 2024-10
Partners and services
- Partner programme openness2.5
- Partner programme terms not found; vendor sells direct
- Multi-tenancy and self-service2.5
- RBAC, node groups and environments; no tenant model
- API and infrastructure-as-code3.5
- PuppetDB, orchestrator, RBAC and code manager APIs; Bolt plans
- Skills and certification2.5
- Training exists; current certification status not found
Alternatives to Puppet
Questions about Puppet
Is Puppet any good?
Puppet ranks #11 of 28 infrastructure automation tools in the Infrastructure Automation Ledger 2026, with a Ledger Index of 57 out of 100. Its strongest areas are configuration management depth, language and authoring, scale and control plane. Its weakest are provisioning breadth, bare metal and day-2 operations.
What are the best alternatives to Puppet?
The closest by Ledger Index are Crossplane (57.2), Scalr (56.7), OpenTofu (55.8), Ironic (55.7).
How is Puppet licensed and sold?
Public packages replaced by EULA-gated Puppet Core in February 2025 with a 25-node free cap; support model changed in 2026-08.
How much lock-in does Puppet bring?
Puppet scores 9 out of 25 on technical lock-in (lower is better). Export path: OpenVox is a drop-in replacement; no converter to other tools.
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