Chef InSpec vs Test Kitchen
Chef InSpec
docs.chef.ioTest Kitchen
kitchen.ciSide by side
| Figure | Chef InSpec | Test Kitchen |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $4.92/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 8 | 1 |
| Spec score · Infrastructure Testing Tools | 9.4 (#1) | 8.2 (#7) |
| Documentation depth | The documentation includes installation, supported platforms, profiles, resource packs, reporters, plugins, licensing and Test Kitchen integration guides. | The documentation site contains getting-started guides, command references, driver, transport, provisioner and verifier pages, configuration reference, contracts, examples, FAQ, lifecycle hooks, and glossary. |
| Installation | Chef documents native installers for Windows and Linux distributions and Habitat packages for macOS, Windows, and Linux distributions. | Users can install the gem with gem install test-kitchen or install Cinc Workstation. |
| Purpose | Chef InSpec tests and audits applications and infrastructure by comparing their actual state with a desired state expressed in InSpec code. | Test Kitchen is a test harness for executing infrastructure code on one or more platforms in isolation. |
| Rating on G2 | 4.2 out of 5 from 105 reviews | 4.7 out of 5 from 5 reviews |
| Support | The licensing page lists community Slack support for Free and Trial tiers and contract support for Commercial licenses. | The documentation directs users to the #test-kitchen channel on Chef Community Slack for assistance from community members. |
| What it does | Chef InSpec is a framework and rule language that tests applications and infrastructure against desired security, compliance and policy states, reporting violations for users to remediate. | Test Kitchen runs infrastructure code against one or more isolated target platforms. |
Plans
Chef InSpec
- FreeFree
- FreeFree
- TrialFree
- TrialFree
- Business$59 a year
- Enterprise$189 a year
- CommercialPriced on request
- Enterprise PlusPriced on request
In their own words
Chef InSpec
Chef InSpec tests and audits applications and infrastructure against a desired state described in InSpec code. Its runtime framework and rule language express compliance, security and policy requirements. Reusable profiles group controls and can include versioning, platform requirements and dependencies. Resources support testing AWS, Azure, AliCloud and GCP infrastructure, and users can create custom resources. Tests can run locally or against cloud services and infrastructure such as Linux in Docker containers. Results can be exported as JSON, HTML or plain text, or sent to Chef Automate. The kitchen-inspec verifier also runs profiles through Test Kitchen. Chef offers premium CIS- and STIG-based profiles for compliance scanning. The free tier is for non-production workloads and personal, non-commercial use; the 30-day trial is for product evaluation under non-production conditions. Commercial licensing covers production and non-production workloads, with entitlements based on purchase order. Chef InSpec 7 requires EULA acceptance, and license-key requirements depend on the distribution source. Telemetry is enabled for free and trial tiers, but not commercial users.
Test Kitchen
Test Kitchen is a free test harness for running infrastructure code in isolation on one or more platforms. Its workflow uses create, converge, setup, verify, and destroy commands to provision environments and test infrastructure code. Documented drivers cover Amazon EC2, Apache CloudStack, DigitalOcean, Docker through Dokken, Google Cloud Platform, Hetzner Cloud, Vagrant, Azure, Hyper-V, OpenStack, and VMware products. Which drivers are available depends on the driver gems installed in the Ruby environment. Provisioning options include Chef Infra, Cinc Client, Habitat, PowerShell DSC, and shell scripts; listed verification integrations include Cinc Auditor, Chef InSpec, and Serverspec. Community plugins add Ansible, Puppet, and Salt provisioners. Installation is available through RubyGems, system packages, or Cinc Workstation, but Test Kitchen itself does not bundle Cinc or Chef tooling. Requirements include a 64-bit operating system and enabled CPU virtualization. The project uses Apache License 2.0 and points users to Chef Community Slack for community assistance. The documentation notes known issues and no current maintainer for kitchen-docker, recommending kitchen-dokken instead.