What is CFEngine?
Infrastructure automation platform providing DevSecOps teams with configuration management, security automation, and compliance enforcement across diverse environments.
CFEngine pricing
Plans, per-tier features and add-ons, dated and linked to live pricing. Pricing changes often; always verify at source before you rely on it.
Free open-source community edition; commercial enterprise edition available. Free trial up to 25 hosts.
Community Edition
FreeOpen source license, runs on Linux
- Open source
- Community support via GitHub
Enterprise Edition
Contact salesCommercial offering with enterprise support
- free_trial_hosts
- 25
- Dedicated support team
- Dashboard features
- Policy analyzer
- Custom alerts & actions
- Compliance reporting
What CFEngine does
The capabilities that matter for configuration management tools, normalised so it lines up with every alternative. “-” means we haven't confirmed it, not that it's missing.
- Architecture
- Agent-based
- Push / pull model
- -
- Config language
- CFEngine policy
- Masterless mode
- -
- Hosting
- Cloud + self-hosted
- Idempotent
- -
- Desired-state declarative
- ✓
- Content registry
- ✓
- Windows support
- ✓
- Cloud provisioning
- -
- Policy / compliance
- ✓
- Enterprise edition
- ✓
- Open-source core
- ✓
Platform & deployment
Independently observed- CLI
- Linux
- Windows
- Cloud / SaaS
- On-premise
- Self-hosted
CFEngine alternatives
Other configuration management tools we track, ranked by the same independent score.
- pyinfraagentless infrastructure automation, in plain Pythonlow · 31%
- NixOS / NixDeclarative builds and deploymentslow · 22%
- HabitatOpen source automation solution for defining, packaging, and delivering applications to any environmentlow · 41%
- OpenVoxThe modern open source implementation of the world's most capable configuration management platformlow · 22%
- Puppet Boltlow · 16%
- Rexthe friendly automation frameworklow · 31%
The Vioscale score: one lens on the evidence
Not user reviews and not a paid placement: a confidence-weighted blend of the independent signals below (adoption, activity, security posture, and more), which you can sort and re-weight yourself. Vendors can correct their listing but can never move their rank, and stars are weighted low as a vanity metric. It is one way to read the evidence for CFEngine, not the verdict.
| Signal | Score | Weight | Contribution | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Capabilities | 81 | 0.12 | 10.0 | ✓ |
| Github Activity | 59 | 0.14 | 8.2 | ✓ |
| Price Level | 80 | 0.05 | 3.7 | ✓ |
| Github Stars | 51 | 0.04 | 2.0 | ✓ |
| Pricing Transparency | 25 | 0.06 | 1.6 | ✓ |
| Reliability | 0 | 0.06 | 0.0 | - |
| Integrations | 0 | 0.06 | 0.0 | - |
| Release Cadence | 0 | 0.08 | 0.0 | - |
| Security Posture | 5 | 0.10 | 0.0 | - |
| Package Downloads | 0 | 0.20 | 0.0 | - |
| Stackoverflow Activity | 0 | 0.09 | 0.0 | - |
Computed . Re-weight it by intent, or see the full method.
All data & sourcesshow ↓
Every value we hold, with its source, retrieval date, and confidence. This is the evidence behind the score: don't trust it, verify it.
Activity
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Commits last 30d | 76 | mediumsource · 2026-08-01 · 65% |
Adoption
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Github stars | 530 | highsource · 2026-08-01 · 90% |
Features
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Capabilities | {"hosting":"both","language":"CFEngine policy","architecture":"agent","desired_state":true,"windows_support":true,"content_registry":true,"open_source_core":true,"policy_compliance":true,"enterprise_edition":true} | mediumsource · 2026-08-05 · 60% |
Language
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Primary | C | highsource · 2026-08-01 · 90% |
Pricing
Security
| Attribute | Value | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Disclosure policy | Yes | mediumsource · 2026-08-05 · 60% |