Foreman vs Rundeck
Foreman
theforeman.orgRundeck
pagerduty.comSide by side
| Figure | Foreman | Rundeck |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $125/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · IT Automation Software | 8.8 (#10) | 8.8 (#12) |
| Intended users | Foreman is aimed at system administrators, and the project says getting started requires a degree of Linux system administration knowledge. | PagerDuty identifies engineering, IT, customer service, and security teams as frontline incident response users for Rundeck. |
| Purpose | Foreman is an open-source tool for managing servers through provisioning, configuration, orchestration, and monitoring. | Rundeck gives incident response teams a self-service way to run automated workflows that prevent, diagnose, and resolve incidents. |
| Support | Community support is available through the Discourse support board and a public Matrix room; the project says its support room is not an official support channel. | Runbook Automation Standard Support is listed as available 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. business hours Monday through Friday, while Platinum Support is listed as 24×7. |
Plans
Rundeck
- Rundeck CommunityFree
- Runbook Automation$125 a month
- Runbook Automation Self-HostedPriced on request
In their own words
Foreman
Foreman is a free, open-source lifecycle management tool for physical and virtual servers. System administrators can use it to automate repetitive tasks, deploy applications, and manage on-premise or cloud systems. It provisions bare-metal machines and resources from providers including Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, OpenStack, Libvirt, oVirt, and VMware. Configuration integrations include Puppet, Ansible, Chef, and Salt; Foreman also collects Ansible reports and facts. Administrators can work through a web frontend, REST API, or Linux CLI, including Hammer CLI access to API calls. Role-based access control and integrations such as LDAP, FreeIPA, and Microsoft Active Directory support access management. Host groups, bulk management, health reports, and audits help organize systems and review changes. A typical deployment has a Foreman server, Smart Proxy servers, and managed hosts. The quickstart lists Enterprise Linux 9, Debian 12 and 13, and Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04, and requires 4 GB of memory. Installation configures multiple system components, and setup requires Linux system administration knowledge.
Rundeck
Rundeck gives incident response teams a self-service way to run automated workflows for preventing, diagnosing and resolving incidents. Jobs can start automatically when a PagerDuty incident begins or be launched manually from the PagerDuty interface. They can gather logs, service status and performance checks from affected systems, then add actions and results to the incident timeline. Runbook Automation can invoke workflows through a web interface, CLI, APIs or integrated applications. Certified Enterprise Plugins include ServiceNow, Kubernetes, Ansible, Datadog, VMware, GitHub, AWS SNS and SQL Runner. Single sign-on is supported with providers such as LDAP, Active Directory and SAML. Buyers can use the managed product or deploy self-hosted on-premise or in a private cloud; a license is required for self-hosted operation. The hosted Runbook Automation plan costs $125 a month, billed per user plus a platform fee. A free plan and a 14-day full-featured trial with no credit card are listed. Standard Support is listed for weekday business hours, while Platinum Support is 24×7.