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NetBrain vs Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 28, 2025

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

NetBrain
Ranking in Network Automation
4th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (16th)
Red Hat Ansible Automation ...
Ranking in Network Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
71
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Configuration Management (1st), AWS Pro Service Providers (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Network Automation category, the mindshare of NetBrain is 10.6%, down from 10.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 15.7%, down from 22.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Automation Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform15.7%
NetBrain10.6%
Other73.7%
Network Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
Vice President at Asset Track for Cloud, LLC
Good monitoring and troubleshoot capabilities, improves overall network traffic visibility
In my organization, we had 130,000 network devices that needed to be brought into the solution and mapped. NetBrain can handle the scale but the engineers that manage those devices have to go in and update all of them to allow NetBrain permission to poll them. It can get a little stressful for everybody when you're trying to roll out new stuff when you've got other issues that have to be addressed with other devices. In some cases, our devices had no automation at all. One example is the Cisco 3650. Right now, if you went through the inventory list, you see that we have different versions running. Some are on one version, whereas others are on another version. The problem with upgrading them is that they need to be done overnight because we don't want to disrupt any network traffic during business hours. Consequently, it could take us years to upgrade the versions before we can even get them onto these new tools. This may be an internal issue but it's a big one when you have a lot of devices. Even if you had 10,000 devices, it's still an issue. You have to consider the compatibility of the device against the tool, and being able to use certain commands to upgrade it.
Sudhir Kumar Tiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at a consultancy with 201-500 employees
Have managed thousands of servers with streamlined configuration processes
Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is very helpful due to passwordless integration and the ability to interact with multiple servers at once, which is especially advantageous when dealing with thousands of servers. The integration aspect of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform has optimized my IT ecosystem significantly by consolidating multiple tools, such as a CI/CD pipeline with Jenkins, where we validate everything, including testing and SonarQube code quality. The agentless architecture of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform, using the SSH key, makes it passwordless and allows us to push configurations with one click, creating a major advantage. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform's main benefit is that it allows us to push configurations to multiple servers without manually visiting each one, maintaining efficiency.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"It enabled me to take the old build manifest and automated everything. So when it came time to spin everything up, it was quick and simple. I could spin it up and test it out. And then, when it came time to roll production, it was a done deal. When we expanded to multiple data centers, it was same thing: Change a few IP addresses, change some names, and off we went."
"There are so many models that I don't have to create one."
"It is very extensible. There are many plugins and modules out there that everybody helps create to interact with different cloud providers as well."
"One of the most valuable features is automation. We are doing automation infrastructure, which allows us to automate regular tasks. This solution provides us with a service catalog, like building new services and automating daily tasks."
"There are no agents by default, so adding a new server is a matter of a couple lines of configuration (on a new server and the configuration master)."
"The ease of being able to use the modules and collections to define what our business processes are is valuable. We are able to give non-technical people the ability to look at a process and say, "We need a step here. Someone do something and put it right here.""
"Ansible provides great reliability when coupled with a versioning system (git). It helps providing predictability to the network by knowing exactly what's being pushed after validating it in production."
"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."
 

Cons

"The solution could integrate more automation."
"Each device needs to be configured to allow NetBrain to poll for the information it needs, which can be very time-consuming for a large network."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"It would be nice if the setup was a little simpler. Also, if the solution could provide more training materials for new people coming into our company so they can quickly learn how to use the functionalities."
"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"Ansible could use more public relations and marketing."
"The tool should allow us to create infrastructure. It has everything when it comes to management, but it lacks the provisioning aspect."
"The solution requires some Linux knowledge."
"Additional features could be added."
"It is a little slow on the network side because every time you call a module, it's initiating an SSH or an API call to a network device, and it just slows things down."
"The solution should add a nice self-service portal."
"One problem that I'm facing right now is the mismatch between the new version of Python and Ansible. Sometimes it's Python 2, and sometimes it's Python 3. When things get a bit dicey, I wish that Ansible would solve this issue by itself. I don't want to have to specify if it is Python 3 or version 2."
"There are challenges in using the graphical interface, particularly in open-source versions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."
"The pricing for us is huge because we use twenty thousand nodes, so that is a huge infrastructure, but if someone is using a small infrastructure, then the pricing is not so much."
"The pricing is pretty standard."
"You don't need to buy agents on servers or deploy expense management when using the solution, which affected our decision to go with it."
"Like many Red Hat products, they have a no-cost version of the web application (AWX, formerly Ansible Tower), but you are on your own to install and it is a little more complicated than just installing Ansible."
"Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."
"Ansible Tower is pretty expensive."
"If you only need to use Ansible, it's free for any end-user, but when you require Ansible Tower, you need to pay per Ansible Tower server."
"Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is an affordable solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business24
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise48
 

Questions from the Community

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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 do you like most about Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform?
The most valuable features of the solution are automation and patching.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Ansible, Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform Subscription on AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
HootSuite Media, Inc., Cloud Physics, Narrative, BinckBank
Find out what your peers are saying about NetBrain vs. Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.