CFEngine

CFEngine is ranked #4 of 67 in IT automation software on Freedom251. It runs on API, Linux, macOS, Self-hosted, Web, Windows. There is a free plan. A free trial is offered.

CFEngine plans and pricing

All plans

Community Edition Free GNU GPL · Linux support · community support cfengine.com · 1 Oct 2026

Enterprise Edition Not published up to 25 hosts free · single price per license · no add-ons or extra functionality costs cfengine.com · 1 Oct 2026

Compared on IT automation software

Free plan: Yes
Deployment model: self_hosted
Agent model: agent_based
Drift detection: Yes
Patch management: Yes
Policy as code: Yes
Compliance reporting: Yes
Supported platforms: Linux (RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu) and Windows

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Free6.6

CFEngine

Purpose: CFEngine automates infrastructure, security and compliance by continuously keeping infrastructure secure, compliant and up to date.
Policy model: Users define desired infrastructure states in CFEngine's domain-specific language, and lightweight agents converge actual states toward them.
Architecture: The CFEngine agent runs on each managed device and connects to the CFEngine hub by default every five minutes to ensure configuration compliance.
Scale: CFEngine runs on embedded devices, servers, cloud systems and mainframes and handles tens or hundreds of thousands of nodes.
Dashboards: Dashboards provide real-time compliance levels, performance monitoring, custom alerts and actions, and customizable shareable dashboards.
Inventory: Inventory reporting collects detailed information across bare-metal servers, virtual machines, cloud instances and IoT devices.
Security: CFEngine's secure bootstrap uses mutual authentication, key exchange and encrypted communication over TLS.
Platforms: CFEngine supports major platforms including RHEL, Ubuntu, Debian and Windows Server, with tailored support available for OpenBSD, IBM AIX, macOS and Solaris.
Support: Enterprise provides a dedicated support team that answers questions, recommends best practices and can prioritize development of requested features.
Modules: CFEngine Build is a catalogue of policies and modules created by CFEngine, partners and the community.
API: The Enterprise API is a REST API that also uses SQL to create custom reports from data held in globally distributed CFEngine database servers.
Founded: 2008
Headquarters: Oslo, Norway
Price from: Free

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Where it ranks on Freedom251

Best IT Automation Software in 2026#4 of 67
Best Configuration Management Tools in 2026#1 of 25
Best IT Configuration Management Software in 2026#3 of 23

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Sources

cfengine.com· checked 1 Oct 2026
docs.cfengine.com/docs/lts/overview/what-is-cfengine-and-· checked 1 Oct 2026
cfengine.com/product-overview/· checked 1 Oct 2026
cfengine.com/features/· checked 1 Oct 2026
docs.cfengine.com/docs/lts/getting-started/01-installing-· checked 1 Oct 2026
docs.cfengine.com/docs/lts/api/· checked 1 Oct 2026
cfengine.com/community-vs-enterprise-comparison/· checked 1 Oct 2026