Forward Enterprise vs Nornir
Forward Enterprise
forwardnetworks.comNornir
nornir.readthedocs.ioSide by side
| Figure | Forward Enterprise | Nornir |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Data Center Networking Solutions | 7.7 (#5) | 7.5 (#8) |
| Spec score · Network Automation Software | 7.7 (#14) | 7.3 (#17) |
| Integrations | The maker lists integrations and partnerships including Infoblox, NetBox, Arista CloudVision, ServiceNow, Itential, Ansible, Axonius, and Rapid7. | Community plugins support NAPALM, Netmiko, NetBox, Ansible inventories, Scrapli, Nautobot, and other systems and libraries. |
| Support | The maker describes customer success, a Forward Community, and professional services as part of its customer support offering. | Official support channels include GitHub issues and discussions, the OpsMill Discord #nornir channel, and a monitored Network to Code Slack channel. |
| What it does | Forward Enterprise builds a mathematical digital twin of a hybrid network from device state and configuration data. | Nornir is a pure Python automation framework intended to be used directly from Python. |
Plans
Forward Enterprise
- Forward Enterprise (modular subscription: Base, Network, Security)Priced on request
In their own words
Forward Enterprise
Forward Enterprise has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Nornir
Nornir is a free, open-source Python automation framework for managing inventory and dispatching tasks to network nodes and devices. It is used directly from Python: inventories contain hosts, groups, and defaults, while reusable tasks accept a Task and return a Result. The included ThreadedRunner runs tasks across hosts with threads and defaults to 20 workers. Plugins cover inventories, transforms, connections, runners, and processors, with community integrations for NAPALM, Netmiko, NetBox, Ansible inventories, Scrapli, Nautobot, and other systems. Nornir supports configuration management, workflow orchestration, and network testing across platforms including Cisco IOS, Cisco NX-OS, Arista EOS, Junos, and Palo Alto PAN-OS. OpsMill describes parallel writes, idempotence, and dry-run safety. The package is published on PyPI and installs with pip; the current package requires Python 3.10 or later. It is self-hosted under Apache-2.0.