AWS Config vs Chef comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Progress Software are both solutions in the Configuration Management category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #16 with an average rating of 8.3, while Progress Software is ranked #18 with an average rating of 7.0. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 2.1% mindshare in CM, compared to Progress Software’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Progress Software users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 16, 2024

Chef and AWS Config are both powerful configuration management tools. Chef fares better in ease of deployment and customer service, while AWS Config excels in features and scalability for complex infrastructures.

Features: Chef has robust automation capabilities, an extensive library of pre-built resources, and solid community support. AWS Config features comprehensive integration with AWS services, real-time monitoring, and advanced compliance tracking.

Room for Improvement: Chef users report a steep learning curve, a desire for better documentation, and more intuitive user interfaces. AWS Config users seek more flexibility in custom rule creation, improved user guidance, and enhanced visualization tools.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Chef is praised for its straightforward deployment process and responsive customer service. AWS Config’s deployment can be complex, but its customer support is efficient and helpful.

Pricing and ROI: Chef is considered cost-effective with a good ROI due to lower setup costs. AWS Config, while more expensive, provides significant ROI with its advanced features and seamless integration capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed AWS Config vs. Chef Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

AWS Config vs. Chef

July 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 865,384 peers since 2012

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

Microsoft Intune

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Configuration Management category, the mindshare of Microsoft Intune is 9.9%, up from 9.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Config is 2.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Chef is 2.1%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Configuration Management

Featured Reviews

AkashKamble

Sr MacOS specialist engineer at Cyber24

Enables management of multiple operating systems with a single license

The best feature is that it's a Microsoft product, so if anything goes wrong, we get quick support for anything required. Remote system functionality allows us to sit anywhere and take control of any device via remote management. We can enhance security for clients' laptops with built-in Microsoft Defender, which is available with the Microsoft Intune license. We use it for reporting purposes through endpoint analytics. When pushing scripting, there are two types available: remediation script and reservation script. Through endpoint analytics, you can push defender policies to clients. It helps with reporting, inventory updates, and monitoring tenant status health.

Read full review

Dineshkumar Thulasiraman

Cloud Engineer at cloudifyops

Useful for vulnerability scanning and data encryption

AWS Config's dashboard improved our company's security as it helps with the vulnerability scanning of resources. AWS Config integrates with the existing security infrastructure of our company, and it is an easy process that is not at all complicated. AWS Config is a security product. The tool protects its users' resources and data from unauthorized access, security breaches, and threats. The product helps with data encryption. You can have your data on AWS KMS, which helps with data encryption. For areas like SSL/TLS encryption, the tool offers data protection between AWS services and endpoints. As I need to learn the components of the product, I rate the overall tool a seven out of ten.

Read full review

Aaron P

DevOps Engineer at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Easy configuration management, optimization abilities, and complete infrastructure and application automation

In terms of improvement, Chef could get better by being more widely available, adapting to different needs, and providing better documentation. There is also an issue with shared resources like cookbooks lacking context, which could lead to problems when multiple companies use them. Chef should aim for wider availability, better flexibility, clearer documentation, and improved management of shared resources to prevent conflicts. Many companies are now moving to Ansible, so I would recommend better documentation, easier customer use, and simpler integration. I have concerns about the complexity of migrating to different servers and would prefer a simpler process.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The Autopilot feature is fantastic. It is a Microsoft product, so it deals best with Microsoft operating systems, but it can integrate with iOS, Mac OS, Linux, and Android."

"Microsoft Intune has helped us by improving our security posture, leading to fewer security problems, and helping us understand where we have issues."

"It is a comprehensive security solution that not only controls access to enterprise resources but also tracks and prevents unauthorized access, ensuring the protection of sensitive data and preventing potential data loss scenarios."

"Autopilot is the most valuable feature of Microsoft Intune."

"Easy to use."

"The solution has reduced the risk of security breaches by 30%."

"The biggest asset is the range of device management options available with Intune, whether it is a Windows device, a Linux device, a Mac device, or mobile devices."

"Autopilot is the most valuable feature."

More Microsoft Intune pros

"The initial setup is super easy, it takes like two minutes. Literally a one-click deployment."

"The solution is scalable and provides over 100 rules."

"AWS Config's dashboard improved our company's security as it helps with the vulnerability scanning of resources."

"The scalability is a ten out of ten."

"Installing the instances and performing upgrades is smooth and clean."

"The tool protects its users' resources and data from unauthorized access, security breaches, and threats."

"This solution has improved my organization in the way that deployment has become very quick and orchestration is easy. If we have thousands of servers we can easily deploy in a small amount of time. We can deploy the applications or any kind of announcements in much less time."

"Stable and scalable configuration management and automation tool. Installing it is easy. Its most valuable feature is its compliance, e.g. it's very good."

"It is a well thought out product which integrates well with what developers and customers are looking for."

"Automation is everything. Having so many servers in production, many of our processes won't work nor scale. So, we look for tools to help us automate the process, and Chef is one of them."

"The solution is easy to use and learn, and it easily automates all the code and infrastructure."

"Chef can be scaled as needed. The Chef server itself can scale but it depends on the available resources. You can upgrade specific resources to meet the demand. Similarly, with clients, you can add as many clients as you need. Again, this depends on the server resources. If the server has enough resources, it can handle the number of servers required to manage the infrastructure. Chef can be scaled to meet the needs of the infrastructure being managed."

"The most valuable feature is automation."

"Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code."

More Chef pros

Cons

"The closest Microsoft Intune can be to GPOs, the better. There needs to be more granularity on application deployments. However, they have done better recently with the application deployments."

"It would be awesome if Microsoft opened their API so we could filter more properties. If we have to do anything outside of Intune that requires a third-party solution to talk back to it, we're very limited in what we can do. Trust your people. We promise not to break your stuff. Open it up just a tiny bit wider."

"The reports that are generated aren't so great. They don't give a lot of meaning so far, but that could be down to user knowledge than the actual reporting side of things. I'm not a big user of it, but I was a bigger user of MaaS360, and we used to be able to run weekly and monthly reports. In the case of any deviations. we'd get a warning immediately. That's not so easy to do or to get in place for Intune. This could be just a user issue, but when I compare both, that's the only thing that's lacking for me."

"There should be more support for macOS. Even though macOS is supported by Intune and Microsoft is working very hard to get more features into Intune to manage macOS, that's one thing they can give a lot more attention to."

"If we could remote into a device, it would be great. Currently, we cannot directly connect to the user device. We have to use other tools such as VMware for connecting to devices."

"The installation is very easy. However, to be able to configure it you will need special knowledge, such as training or self-studies to have a proper level of security. There are many settings one has to understand before being able to implement Microsoft Intune."

"I wanted to check if there is any provision at the Intune level to restrict certain things, such as a website, but unfortunately, that feature is available only in Microsoft Defender. Intune has web filtering capabilities, but they are only useful for protection from malicious websites, whereas we would like to be able to restrict a website. For example, YouTube is a clean website. No one would identify it as a malicious website, but if we want to stop the end-users from going to that website, we have to go for another product, such as Microsoft Defender or another third-party proxy solution. It would be great if this capability is included in Intune."

"It should be simplified. I've worked with many different mobile device management solutions, and Intune is one of the more complex ones. It could be more simplified, and some of it is related to the wording that is being used, such as a configuration profile versus a policy. They really should have had different names to make it less confusing."

More Microsoft Intune cons

"The reboot process for AWS instances could be improved. Microsoft Azure does not have this problem, so AWS could consider making their instances more robust. You would not need to reboot your instances frequently to replace the hardware and stuff. They can look for a better approach or mechanism to improve in the future. The concern is that you need to plan for the outage when you reboot an instance. You need to have a maintenance window where you can properly reboot the instance without affecting your application. When Amazon announces that you need to reboot an instance and are not ready, this becomes a problem."

"There is room for improvement in built-in tools, they are not up to the mark."

"The solution is missing a configuration that can assist us when writing our programming languages."

"Improvements are needed as per customer requirements."

"They could provide more features, so the recipes could be developed in a simpler and faster way. There is still a lot of room for improvement, providing better functionalities when creating recipes."

"The time that it takes in terms of integration. Cloud integration is comparatively easy, but when it comes to two-link based integrations - like trying to integrate it with any monitoring tools, or maybe some other ticketing tools - it takes longer. That is because most of the out-of-the-box integration of the APIs needs some revisiting."

"I would like to see more security features for Chef and more automation."

"Vertical scalability is still good but the horizontal, adding more technologies, platforms, tools, integrations, Chef should take a look into that."

"It is an old technology."

"I would like them to add database specific items, configuration items, and migration tools. Not necessarily on the builder side or the actual setup of the system, but more of a migration package for your different database sets, such as MongoDB, your extenders, etc. I want to see how that would function with a transition out to AWS for Aurora services and any of the RDBMS packages."

"I would rate this solution a nine because our use case and whatever we need is there. Ten out of ten is perfect. We have to go to IOD and stuff so they should consider things like this to make it a ten."

"Since we are heading to IoT, this product should consider anything related to this."

More Chef cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There is a license needed for this solution and it is either included in one of the enterprise license agreements. Microsoft licensing is a mathematical institute, it could be quite complex. We tend to ask specialized organizations to research what the most profitable way it would be for us to use licenses in the organizations."

"The pricing is competitive, but it is not cheap."

"Its price is fair. It's a normal price. It isn't too expensive or too cheap."

"We work in the charity sector, so a lot of our clients get Microsoft Premium licenses or Business Premium for free. They get ten licenses free, and a lot of our clients do not have more than ten staff members. They are getting the tool for free, so its cost is not an issue."

"It comes as a bundle, so you do not really know what the prices are. Microsoft does not break it down to the user cost for us. It is just bundled with our E5 license."

"It is average. Some of the costs are quite high depending on what the customer currently uses, but overall, it is not bad. I would not say that I would not recommend Intune based on the cost. I definitely would, but they can definitely improve on the cost. So overall, its cost is not bad."

"On a scale of one to ten with one being the cheapest, the cost of Microsoft Intune is a five."

"The price of Microsoft Intune is reasonable."

More Microsoft Intune pricing and cost advice

"It is a very expensive tool. AWS pricing for Config is not fixed and depends on your organization's size and complexity."

"The solution charges us per hour. There's no license."

"We are using the free, open source version of the software, which we are happy with at this time."

"Pricing for Chef is high."

"When we're rolling out a new server, we're not using the AWS Marketplace AMI, we're using our own AMI, but we are paying them a licensing fee."

"The price per node is a little weird. It doesn't scale along with your organization. If you're truly utilizing Chef to its fullest, then the number of nodes which are being utilized in any particular day might scale or change based on your Auto Scaling groups. How do you keep track of that or audit it? Then, how do you appropriately license it? It's difficult."

"Chef is priced based on the number of nodes."

"I wasn't involved in the purchasing, but I am pretty sure that we are happy with the current pricing and licensing since it never comes up."

"The price is always a problem. It is high. There is room for improvement. I do like purchasing on the AWS Marketplace, but I would like the ability to negotiate and have some flexibility in the pricing on it."

"We are able to save in development time, deployment time, and it makes it easier to manage the environments."

More Chef pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Configuration Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

23%

Photography Company

Comms Service Provider

Media Company

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

15%

Retailer

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

How does Microsoft Intune compare with VMware Workspace One?

Microsoft Intune is a great tool for managing a mobile device fleet while keeping access control. The solution makes ...

See all answers

What are the pros and cons of Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune is a great configuration management tool and has a lot of good things going for it. Here are some of...

See all answers

How does Google Cloud Identity compare with Microsoft Intune?

Microsoft Intune offers not only an easy-to-deploy data protection and productivity management solution, but also ...

See all answers

What do you like most about AWS Config?

The initial setup is super easy, it takes like two minutes. Literally a one-click deployment.

See all answers

What needs improvement with AWS Config?

Improvements are needed as per customer requirements.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for AWS Config?

I use the solution in my company to check the vulnerabilities for all the resources, including tools like S3, EC2 Ins...

See all answers

What do you like most about Chef?

Chef is a great tool for an automation person who wants to do configuration management with infrastructure as a code.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Chef?

Chef is priced based on the number of nodes.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Chef?

Chef does not support the containerized things of Chef products. In the future, Chef could develop a docker container...

See all answers

Comparisons

Jamf Pro vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 10% of the time

Workspace ONE UEM vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 8% of the time

ManageEngine Endpoint Central vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Entra ID vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 6% of the time

Samsung Knox vs Microsoft Intune

Compared 4% of the time

More Microsoft Intune Competitors

AWS Systems Manager vs AWS Config

Compared 73% of the time

Spring Cloud vs AWS Config

Compared 18% of the time

More AWS Config Competitors

BigFix vs Chef

Compared 39% of the time

AWS CloudFormation vs Chef

Compared 10% of the time

AWS Systems Manager vs Chef

Compared 10% of the time

VMware Aria Automation vs Chef

Compared 8% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs Chef

Compared 7% of the time

More Chef Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Intune

August 2025

Download Microsoft Intune product report

Buyer's Guide

Configuration Management

July 2025

Download AWS Config product report

Buyer's Guide

Chef

August 2025

Download Chef product report

Also Known As

Intune, MS Intune, Microsoft Endpoint Manager

No data available

Overview

Microsoft Intune provides centralized management of mobile devices and applications, ensuring security, compliance, and productivity through integration with Microsoft services like Microsoft 365 and Azure Active Directory.

Organizations use Intune for managing mobile devices and applications, enhancing security and compliance across platforms. With features like single sign-on, conditional access, and zero-touch deployment via Autopilot, it facilitates efficient operations. Intune's scalability, easy enrollment, and capabilities such as remote wipe support diverse device management, offering robust data protection and efficient operation. Despite its features, improvement areas include reporting, compatibility with non-Microsoft devices, and better support for macOS and Linux devices.

What are the key features of Microsoft Intune?

Seamless Integration: Works with Microsoft 365, Azure Active Directory, and System Center for streamlined management.
Conditional Access: Enhances security with policies that restrict access based on conditions.
Autopilot: Provides zero-touch deployment for setting up new devices efficiently.
Mobile Device Management: Enables control over both personal and corporate devices.
Application Deployment: Facilitates app delivery across a range of devices.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Centralized Management: Reduces complexity by managing devices and applications in one place.
Security Enhancement: Protects data with features like remote wipe and compliance monitoring.
Improved Productivity: Enhances efficiency with seamless integration and automation features.
Device Scalability: Supports diverse device management for growing business needs.

In industries such as finance, healthcare, and education, Microsoft Intune is implemented to ensure secure and compliant device management. Companies leverage its capabilities to deploy security policies and manage both corporate-owned and BYOD environments, facilitating a unified approach to data protection and compliance.

Microsoft

AWS Config is a service that enables you to assess, audit, and evaluate the configurations of your AWS resources. Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations. With Config, you can review changes in configurations and relationships between AWS resources, dive into detailed resource configuration histories, and determine your overall compliance against the configurations specified in your internal guidelines. This enables you to simplify compliance auditing, security analysis, change management, and operational troubleshooting.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Chef, is the leader in DevOps, driving collaboration through code to automate infrastructure, security, compliance and applications. Chef provides a single path to production making it faster and safer to add value to applications and meet the demands of the customer. Deployed broadly in production by the Global 5000 and used by more than half of the Fortune 500, Chef develops 100 percent of its software as open source under the Apache 2.0 license with no restrictions on its use. Chef Enterprise Automation Stack™, a commercial distribution, is developed solely from that open source code and unifies security, compliance, infrastructure and application automation with observability. Chef provides an unequaled developer experience for the Coded Enterprise by enabling users to express infrastructure, security policies and the application lifecycle as code, modernizing development, packaging and delivery of any application to any platform. For more information, visit http://chef.io and follow @chef.

Progress Software

Sample Customers

Mitchells and Buzzers, Callaway

Flatiron, Prezi, iZettle, British Gas, Burt, Autodesk, FanDuel

Facebook, Standard Bank, GE Capital, Nordstrom, Optum, Barclays, IGN, General Motors, Scholastic, Riot Games, NCR, Gap

Buyer's Guide

AWS Config vs. Chef

July 2025

Free Report: AWS Config vs. Chef

Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Config vs. Chef and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our AWS Config vs. Chef report.

See our list of best Configuration Management vendors.

We monitor all Configuration Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.