Foreman vs Salt
Foreman
theforeman.org
Salt
saltproject.ioSide by side
| Figure | Foreman | Salt |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · IT Automation Software | 8.8 (#10) | 8.4 (#20) |
| Spec score · IT Configuration Management Software | 8.7 (#4) | 8.3 (#12) |
| Spec score · Orchestration / Provisioning Software | 8.7 (#5) | 8.3 (#8) |
| Access control | Foreman provides role-based access control and can use LDAP or FreeIPA for authentication and authorization. | Salt provides publisher ACLs and external authentication that can restrict users to selected functions on selected minions. |
| Cloud integrations | The product page lists Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, OpenStack, Libvirt, oVirt, VMware, and other providers for hybrid cloud management. | Salt Cloud documentation lists providers including Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, Azure, OpenStack, DigitalOcean, Linode, VMware, Proxmox, and others. |
| Configuration management | Foreman includes configuration management support for Puppet and Salt and collects Ansible reports and facts. | Salt states are described as simple, extensible, deterministic, and layerable. |
| Purpose | Foreman is an open-source tool for managing servers through provisioning, configuration, orchestration, and monitoring. | Salt is a Python-based, open-source framework for remote execution, configuration management, automation, provisioning, and orchestration. |
| 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. | The project directs users to GitHub issues for bugs and problems and to Discord for community technical support and discussions. |
Plans
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.
Salt
Salt is a free, open-source framework for remote execution, configuration management, provisioning and infrastructure orchestration. A single execution can run commands across thousands of systems in seconds. A typical setup has a master managing minions, but Salt also supports agentless operation through salt-ssh or salt-proxy and stand-alone use. Salt states define configurations that can be extended and layered, while orchestration can order work by dependency, such as preparing a load balancer before a web-server cluster. Salt Cloud provisions systems on cloud hosts and hypervisors and can connect new virtual machines to a master. Its documented providers include Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, Azure, OpenStack, DigitalOcean, Linode, VMware and Proxmox. SaltStack Config adds a web interface, role-based access control, multi-master support, reporting and an enterprise API, along with LDAP, SAML, OIDC and Active Directory integrations. Salt uses RSA key authentication and encrypted master-minion communication. It is self-hosted and licensed under Apache 2.0.