Salt

Salt is ranked #8 of 67 in IT automation software on Freedom251. It runs on API, Linux, macOS, Self-hosted, Windows. There is a free plan.

Salt plans and pricing

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Salt Open Source Free Apache 2.0 license docs.saltproject.io · 1 Oct 2026

Compared on IT automation software

Free plan: Yes
Deployment model: self_hosted
Agent model: both
Drift detection: Yes
Patch management: Yes
Policy as code: Yes
Compliance reporting: Yes
Supported platforms: Linux, Windows, macOS, AIX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Solaris, Gentoo, SUSE

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6.6

Salt

Purpose: Salt is an open-source automation framework for remote execution, configuration management, provisioning, and infrastructure orchestration.
Scale: Salt can execute multiple commands across thousands of systems in seconds with a single execution.
Configuration management: Salt states are described as simple, extensible, deterministic, and layerable.
Management modes: A Salt minion can run the salt-minion service, use salt-ssh or salt-proxy agentlessly, or run without a master in stand-alone mode.
Cloud provisioning: Salt Cloud provisions systems on cloud hosts or hypervisors and automatically connects newly created virtual machines to the Salt master.
Cloud integrations: Salt Cloud documentation lists providers including Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, Azure, OpenStack, DigitalOcean, Linode, VMware, Proxmox, and others.
Enterprise UI: SaltStack Config includes a web-based user interface, role-based access control, multi-master support, job and event caching, reporting, and an enterprise API.
Identity integrations: SaltStack Config supports LDAP, SAML, OIDC, and Active Directory integration.
Compliance: SaltStack Config provides security policies with industry-standard compliance profiles such as CIS and DISA STIGS.
Transport security: Salt uses RSA key-based authentication, requires administrator acceptance of minion keys by default, authenticates the master, and cannot disable encrypted master-minion communication.
API: Salt netapi modules provide network API access over REST through HTTP and WSGI and through WebSockets.
Supported systems: The supported operating-system families include Amazon Linux, Debian, macOS, Red Hat, and Windows, with listed x86_64, arm64, amd64, and x86 architectures.
Support limits: openSUSE is covered under reasonable-effort support, with no guarantee that Salt Project packages will be available.
Community support: Salt Project directs community members to its Discord server and GitHub Discussions.
Price from: Free

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Where it ranks on Freedom251

Best IT Automation Software in 2026#8 of 67
Best Configuration Management Tools in 2026#5 of 25
Best IT Configuration Management Software in 2026#6 of 23

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Sources

docs.saltproject.io/salt/user-guide/en/latest/topics/overvi· checked 30 Sept 2026
docs.saltproject.io/en/3006/topics/cloud/index.html· checked 30 Sept 2026
docs.saltproject.io/salt/user-guide/en/latest/topics/securi· checked 30 Sept 2026
docs.saltproject.io/en/latest/topics/netapi/index.html· checked 30 Sept 2026
docs.saltproject.io/salt/install-guide/en/latest/topics/sal· checked 30 Sept 2026
saltproject.io/blog/goodbye-slack-hello-discord/· checked 30 Sept 2026
docs.saltproject.io/salt/install-guide/en/latest/topics/dow· checked 1 Oct 2026
docs.saltproject.io/en/latest/topics/about_salt_project.htm· checked 1 Oct 2026