Rudder vs Salt
Rudder
rudder.io
Salt
saltproject.ioSide by side
| Figure | Rudder | Salt |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $3.33/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 8 | 1 |
| Spec score · IT Automation Software | 8.8 (#11) | 8.4 (#20) |
| Spec score · IT Configuration Management Software | 8.7 (#5) | 8.3 (#12) |
| Spec score · Configuration Management Tools | 8.7 (#5) | 8.3 (#9) |
| Spec score · Infrastructure Automation | 8.8 (#5) | 8.4 (#8) |
| Compliance | Rudder can audit standards including CIS benchmarks and SecNumCloud, and trigger OpenSCAP audits with results in its interface. | SaltStack Config provides security policies with industry-standard compliance profiles such as CIS and DISA STIGS. |
| Integrations | GetApp lists integrations or API connections involving Slack, Ansible, Rundeck, Zabbix and OpenSCAP. | SaltStack Config integrates with LDAP, SAML, OIDC, and Active Directory. |
| Security | Rudder documentation says communications are encrypted with TLS 1.3 and agents authenticate mutually with the server or relay using mTLS. | Salt uses RSA keys for authentication, AES keys for encryption, and rotates the AES key every 24 hours by default or when a minion is deleted. |
| Support | Enterprise includes unlimited standard support, while the Corporate Security Suite includes unlimited premium support and a dedicated customer success manager. | The project directs users to GitHub issues for bugs and problems and to Discord for community technical support and discussions. |
Plans
Rudder
- Rudder CoreFree
- Rudder Starter - Essential (Monthly)$4 a month
- Rudder Security Suite - Premium (Monthly)$23 a month
- Rudder Starter - Essential (Yearly)$40 a year
- Rudder Security Suite - Standard (Yearly)$200 a year
- Rudder Security Suite - Premium (Yearly)$225 a year
- Rudder Corporate Security SuitePriced on request
- Rudder EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
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.