Cinc Auditor vs Conftest

Cinc Auditor is a free distribution of Chef InSpec for compliance and audit workflows on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Its profiles are fully compatible with upstream counterparts, and its tools work with InSpec; an InSpec wrapper redirects to Cinc Auditor so existing automation can keep working. Installation options include scripts, Bundler, RubyGems, and plain packages. Cinc also publishes a Docker Hub image as a drop-in replacement for chef/inspec. It can run InSpec-compatible profiles in CI or against containers, with GitLab CI and GitHub Actions named as examples. Auditor is included in Cinc Workstation. Cinc says its binaries use the Apache 2.0 license without additional EULAs or licensing. The project does not provide formal warranties or support, and it does not currently offer repositories for standard package managers such as yum or apt. The free plan costs nothing. Cinc recommends contacting Progress for warranty or support needs.

Conftest is a free utility for testing structured configuration data, designed for use in CI environments. It uses the Open Policy Agent Rego language to express policies, then evaluates deny, violation, and warning rules within namespaces. Configuration can be read from individual files, directories, multiple files, or standard input. Supported inputs include Kubernetes-style YAML, JSON, HCL and HCL2, Dockerfiles, Terraform-related data, JSONnet, TOML, and XML. Results can be output as plaintext, JSON, TAP, table, JUnit, GitHub, Azure DevOps, or SARIF; the GitHub outputter can annotate test results in workflows. The `conftest verify` command runs policy unit tests. Policies can be pulled from HTTPS URLs, Git repositories, and OCI registries, or pushed to compatible OCI registries. Plugins extend the CLI, with downloads available from sources including OCI, Git, HTTP/HTTPS, Mercurial, and cloud storage. Pre-commit hooks support policy workflows, and integrations are documented for CircleCI, GitHub Actions, and Tekton. Conftest is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows.