Ansible vs. Puppet: How Does Each Stack Up?

Looking to understand the difference between Ansible vs. Puppet? In a DevOps landscape crowded with different tools that can handle configuration management, complex tasks, and compliance requirements, you’ll want to make sure you are equipped with the right tool for your organization's needs.

What is the Difference Between Ansible vs. Puppet?

Both Ansible and Puppet can help manage infrastructure as code (IaC) and deploy configuration management across an entire organization. However, Puppet’s scalability and use in complex, long-term deployments make it a preferred platform for larger organizations, while Ansible’s ability to easily reprovision made it ideal for smaller teams who need flexibility with deployment. 

Over time, Ansible and Puppet have evolved beyond simple task automation to become full-featured platforms for configuration management and compliance. Both originated from the same goal — simplifying IT operations by automating repetitive work like patching, updates, and software deployments — but have since matured to help organizations meet complex regulatory and operational requirements. Today, they’re available as enterprise offerings: Puppet through Puppet Core and the Puppet Enterprise platform, and Ansible through the Ansible Automation Platform. 

To assess which platform is the right fit, you’ll want to ask yourself questions about what you need from an infrastructure automation platform: 

• Do you need the flexibility to make rapid changes, or the control to enforce long-term consistency?
• Can the platform scale with your organization as you grow and extend into hybrid and edge environments?
• Do you need continuous compliance and drift remediation, or primarily just task-based automation for ad hoc changes?
• What level of enterprise support, security, and compliance assurance do you need over the lifecycle of the platform?
• Does the platform integrate easily with your existing tools, workflows, and ecosystems?
• Do you need the ability to remediate thousands of devices rapidly in response to vulnerabilities, or enforce compliance automatically over time?
• Do you require clear visibility and reporting to satisfy auditors and compliance teams? 

Don't just read about the Puppet difference — request a demo and see for yourself.

By clearly defining your end state and understanding what you want to achieve with infrastructure automation, you can better evaluate the differences between Ansible and Puppet to find the right fit for your environment. Many organizations use different tools for different stages of the infrastructure lifecycle: task-based automation for initial deployments, and desired state automation for long-term consistency and compliance. 

However, with the Puppet Edge capability, separation is no longer required. Puppet now offers the flexibility to handle both task-based and desired state within a single platform, allowing teams to automate across servers, cloud, network, and edge devices without switching tools or compromising control.  
 

Puppet vs. Ansible FAQ

Are Puppet and Ansible the Same?

• No. Puppet is agent-based and built for desired state automation, continually enforcing consistency and compliance at scale. With Puppet Edge, it also supports task-based, agentless automation for targeted actions — all within one solution. Ansible, by contrast, is agentless and primarily task-based, running ad hoc commands or playbooks for one-time changes or deployments. 

How is Puppet Different from Ansible?

• Puppet uses declarative automation, meaning you define the desired configuration, and Puppet automatically enforces it to keep systems consistent and compliant at scale. At the same time, Puppet also supports task-based automation for targeted, ad hoc actions when speed and flexibility are required. Ansible, by contrast, uses imperative automation, where you specify the exact steps to reach the desired state and the tool executes those steps.

Is Puppet Faster than Ansible?

• It depends on what you mean by “faster.” There are really two considerations: how quickly you can get started, and how efficiently the tools run at scale.
  • Getting started: Ansible is generally faster to learn and adopt. Playbooks are written in YAML and Jinja, and the tool requires less initial setup. Puppet uses its own DSL (inspired by Ruby) along with YAML for hierarchical data modeling. While that learning curve can be steeper at first, Puppet’s model reduces long-term complexity as infrastructures grow more complex.
  • Processing at scale: Puppet agents connect securely to the primary server over TLS, which is highly efficient and designed for large-scale environments. Ansible pushes instructions over SSH or WinRM from its control node, which can be limited by the number of simultaneous connections it can manage. 

In practice, Ansible may be faster simply to get started with, while Puppet is faster and more efficient at maintaining consistency and compliance at scale, without introducing growing complexity. 

Can You Use Puppet with Ansible?

• Yes, but the bigger question nowadays is why would you need to. Puppet unifies desired state and task-based automation in a single solution, and you can even run existing Ansible playbooks and ad hoc commands. This lets you preserve the work you’ve already done while gaining access to the enterprise features, improved efficiency, and long-term compliance aspects of Puppet. 

Which is Better: Puppet or Ansible?

• It depends on your needs. Ansible is good with API-driven services and ephemeral, cloud-native environments that are provisioning-heavy but short-lived. Puppet is highly beneficial for large-scale, persistent deployments where desired state, compliance, and self-healing matter most. It also delivers task-based flexibility and the ability to reuse existing Ansible playbooks in a single solution. 
   

Ansible vs. Puppet: Key Features to Note 

Let’s dive into the specific line-items you’ll want to consider between Ansible vs. Puppet. 

Desired State Enforcement

One of the primary ways Puppet and Ansible differ is in their approach to keeping servers in a desired state. 

• Ansible uses an agentless approach, which relies on communication methods like SSH or WinRM to push updates from the Ansible primary server to the servers under management.
• Puppet supports agent-based automation, which installs Puppet agents on managed servers that communicate directly with the Puppet primary server. 

Puppet's approach makes it easy to continuously enforce desired state across an entire fleet of servers. The Puppet agents check in with the primary server every 30 minutes by default, and if something's not configured correctly, the primary server pushes code to bring the drifted server back to the desired configuration. And because Puppet doesn't rely on SSH or WinRM, it can manage that desired state across Linux and Windows environments, even when the network is spotty or down. 

Ansible can't continuously enforce a desired state because the agentless connection is less reliable. If a network outage or overload interrupts the connection between the primary Ansible server and its managed nodes, Ansible can't push updates or check in with managed nodes, leaving it unable to correct drift that might happen. 

Implementation

Ansible is known for its quick setup and ease of use, as well as its user-friendly language, YAML. This language is procedural and task based. For anything that is more complex and requires conditional logic, users will need to implement the Jinja2 language.  

Puppet’s Domain Specific Language is declarative, and designed to be more like Ruby, and it requires set up on both the server and client as it’s installed. This approach provides greater visibility across devices, as well as greater flexibility and control when changes are required. The orchestrator can use tasks which can also be written in any language the managed nodes understand, such as BASH, Python, Ruby, Go, or PowerShell (for Windows). 

Flexibility 

Ansible’s automation sequences are made up of a list of commands that must be run in a specific order to work. The Puppet server compiles code into a deterministic set of controls that are automatically performed in the appropriate order, which adds to their flexibility and customization. 

For tasks such as continuous compliance and drift remediation, for example, Puppet server compiles code into a deterministic set of controls that are automatically performed in the appropriate order.  

Visibility 

Ansible Controller (formerly Ansible Tower) offers a visual user interface to schedule and run tasks. However, both reporting and historical auditing capabilities are not included, which makes it difficult to preview the impact of new code.  

Puppet’s interface was built with viewing, managing, and monitoring in mind. Puppet Impact Analysis, a premium feature included in Puppet Enterprise Advanced, lets you see how changes to your existing infrastructure code could affect other parts of your system before you deploy them. 

Scalability 

Puppet’s reusable blocks of IaC can apply policies at scale across complex IT environments. Because of this, Puppet is a fantastic platform for scaling automation to support business growth.  

Since Ansible works primarily by pushing playbook instructions from a centralized control plane (potentially through “execution engines”) to the managed nodes, scalability is limited to the number of outgoing network connections each “execution engine” can establish at one time. It is also common to add execution engines for every 500-1000 nodes under Ansible control.  

On the other hand, because Puppet primarily works on a pull model where clients check in on a more random basis, each “compiler” can generally handle 3-5x more nodes for the same hardware capability. In some cases, the push model that Ansible uses (and that Puppet’s Tasks/Plans also leverage for network and edge devices), changes may propagate through an environment in a shorter time period.  

Enterprise Support 

What happens when something goes wrong or you need additional support? Both Puppet and Ansible have backups in the event of a failure, which means there are no interruptions within either platform.  

Because the Puppet agent runs on the managed node, even the loss of a primary server means only that no new code is delivered to the managed node. The existing catalog will still be applied, keeping the system in compliance and remediating any drift. If the Ansible controller is lost, playbooks cannot be executed, potentially leaving managed nodes to drift and increase risk in the environment.  

🤔 Check out another comparison with our "Terraform vs. Puppet" blog. 

Community 

Both Puppet and Ansible have strong user communities. Puppet connects through an active Slack channel and the community contributes modules and tutorials to the Puppet Forge.  

Differences at a Glance: 

Other Ansible vs. Puppet Considerations 

In the case of Ansible vs. Puppet, scale is at the heart of the comparison. Some organizations are small and lean — they might work in regulated industries where compliance and visibility are key. Those teams might look for something more “off the shelf” for automation needs when customization is not critical. For this purpose, Ansible is always ready to deploy and relatively easy to get running.  

Puppet was designed to excel with complexity and scale, and it’s a more robust tool for organizations that need to implement a long list of tasks, are handling compliance concerns, and are continuing to grow. When reporting and consistency is a concern, Puppet is a fantastic option.  

By understanding your desired end state — what you want to achieve with infrastructure automation — you can better evaluate how Puppet and Ansible approach different challenges. Traditionally, organizations have relied on separate tools for different stages of the infrastructure lifecycle: using task-based automation for initial deployments and desired state automation for long-term consistency and compliance. 

By pairing Puppet Core or the Puppet Enterprise platform with the new Puppet Edge capability, you no longer need to choose between approaches. Puppet delivers the best of both worlds, enabling you to manage everything — from servers to edge devices — through a single, scalable solution that combines declarative control with flexible, task-based automation. And if you have already invested in another automation tool, you can now run playbooks from platforms like Ansible directly in Puppet, allowing you to benefit from prior work while unifying your automation strategy. 

Ready to simplify your automation strategy? Contact our team to learn how Puppet and Puppet Edge can help.