No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Apstra Operating System vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 1, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Apstra Operating System
Ranking in Network Automation
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Network Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Configuration Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Network Automation category, the mindshare of Apstra Operating System is 2.1%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 14.3%, down from 18.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform14.3%
Apstra Operating System2.1%
Other83.6%
Network Automation
 

Featured Reviews

HF
Works at wolterskluwer
Highly secure, useful AB test, and stable
I am using Apstra Operating System for some classes and for my personal use Apstra Operating System's most important features are the security and AB test to define what approach we need to take in my company. Additionally, the solution does not take a lot of maintenance. The report data could…
Manas Kashyap - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Dev Ops Engineer at 11 East Capital
Automation has transformed server patching and has reduced months of work to minutes
The best features that Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform offers is that it does not require any additional resources inside the servers. Python is the only requirement, and since Python is already present inside the servers, we can run it from our location and it automatically deploys things and does the work for us. The minimal requirements and easy deployment have definitely impacted my daily work and my team's efficiency. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is one of the best features that we depend on. We have evaluated other options, but Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was the best choice because it has saved us a tremendous amount of time. We do not need to manually intervene in the servers or install third-party software to maintain these things. It is very easy to write playbooks for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform. Ansible Galaxy contains many playbooks that are readily available and ready to be used. It is highly configurable with Jinja templating, making it easy to maintain. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has positively impacted my organization. Previously, we needed to go into the servers and maintain them manually, which used to take a lot of time. For 200 to 300 servers, the maintenance took about one to two months. New patches would arrive and we would have to repeat the process. Now, it is a one-night work or a 10 to 15 minutes task. We write a playbook, maintain an inventory, and roll out the updates and it starts working for us. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform uses conditional clauses and has rollback options, functioning like a standard coding language that is simple to use. There is definitely a reduction in errors with Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform because we have playbooks written with all the necessary clauses and rollback options. Manual work automatically creates more errors, whereas in automation, we have written sets that we do not forget every time we run it. We have protected written sets that we execute consistently.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Apstra Operating System's most important features are the security and AB test to define what approach we need to take in my company. Additionally, the solution does not take a lot of maintenance."
"I find Apstra Operating System very good to use and would recommend this solution to others."
"The API for exposing all our infrastructure services is the most valuable feature."
"It has improved our organization through provisioning and security hardening. When we do get a new VM, we have been able to bring on a provisioned machine in less than a day. This morning alone, I provisioned two machines within an hour. I am talking about hardening, installing antivirus software on it, and creating user accounts because the Playbooks were predesigned. From the time we got the servers to the actual hand-off, it takes less than an hour. We are talking about having the servers actually authenticate Red Hat Satellites and run the yum updates. All of that can be done within an hour."
"The solution is very simple to use."
"Ansible has brought a platform which has allowed us to automate a lot of services, not just server services, but network services as well."
"The work that previously took two months now takes 10 to 15 minutes."
"I like Ansible because it is: Easy to use, easy to read, easy to maintain, easy to support, and it works without an agent."
"The most valuable features of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform are the agentless platform and writing the code is simple using the Yaml computer language."
"There are so many models that I don't have to create one."
 

Cons

"The report data could improve in Apstra Operating System."
"We'll probably use it in conjunction with Puppet, because Puppet is more a solution where every 30 minutes it's going to check, whereas Ansible doesn't do that."
"It should support more integration with different products."
"There have been some differences between the operating systems that we have noticed. It could be down to cryptographic policies, but we have noticed some speed issues. They should work on the speed of deployment on different operating systems."
"Currently, Ansible can't do this with all the modules out there."
"We are not using the Dashboard a lot because we have higher expectations from it. The default Dashboard from Tower doesn't give that much information. We really want to get down into more than if the job succeeded or what was the percentage of success. We want to get down to task-level success. If, in a job, there are ten tasks, we want to see this task was a success, and this was not, and how many were not. That's the kind of granularity we are looking for, that Tower does not give right now."
"The solution requires some Linux knowledge."
"Additional features could be added."
"It would be good to make the solution more user-friendly,"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is competitive."
"I am using the community edition of the solution which is free."
"It’s an open-source tool."
"The solution is inexpensive compared to other products."
"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."
"We're charged between $8 to $13 a month per license."
"We use the open-source version of the solution."
"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints."
"Red Hat's open source approach was a factor when choosing Ansible, since the solution is free as of right now."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Automation solutions are best for your needs.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business25
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise52
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is the difference between Red Hat Satellite and Ansible?
Red Hat Satellite has proven to be a worthwhile investment for me. Both its patch management and license management have been outstanding. If you have a large environment, patching systems is much ...
How does Ansible compare to Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (SCCM)?
Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager takes knowledge and research to properly configure. The length of time that the set up will take depends on the kind of technical architecture that your org...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform was very simple. There is no pricing and no licensing required, as Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform ...
 

Also Known As

Apstra OS, AOS
Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Subscription on AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bloomberg Television, Energy Corporation, A mid-sized financial services company
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about Red Hat, Cisco, SolarWinds and others in Network Automation. Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.