How much does Chef cost?

Chef publishes 2 tiers, from Free for Open Source up to $4000/year for Chef Automate. The entry tier costs nothing.

What is the difference between Open Source and Chef Automate on Chef?

Chef Automate costs $4000/year against Free, and adds compliance automation, insights, 24/7 support.

What am I actually paying for with Chef?

The record lists 20 features across 5 areas: core, integrations, security, deployment, platform. In practice it is brought in for configuration management and infrastructure automation across server fleets, enforcing compliance and audit policy on managed nodes.

Does Chef charge per user?

The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 2 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.

Are these Chef prices current?

They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.

What should I compare Chef against before paying?

Nothing else in this directory is filed close enough to Chef to make a useful price comparison.

Software · pricing

Chef pricing

Chef publishes 2 tiers. Below is each one, what it adds over the tier beneath it, and where the ladder stops being worth climbing for most people.

Entry price: Free
Model: Open-source
Tiers: 2
Free tier: Yes

Chef plans, side by side

Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.

Chef pricing tiers
Plan	Price	Features listed	Step up from the tier below
Open Source	Free	4	Entry tier
Chef Automate	$4000/year	4	+$4000/year, 3 more features

What each tier adds

The set difference between each tier's feature list and the one beneath it. Where a tier lists nothing new, the vendor has either stopped repeating the inherited list or the tier raises limits rather than adding capability, the record does not distinguish the two, so this page does not either.

Open Source

Free

The entry tier. It covers chef infra, community support, full functionality, open source.

Chef Automate

$4000/year

Over Open Source, this tier adds:

Compliance automation
Insights
24/7 support

Where Chef stops being free

Open Source, Free

Chef Infra
Community support
Full functionality
Open source

Chef Automate, $4000/year

The first thing you pay for:

Compliance automation
Insights
24/7 support

What the product covers

The full Chef feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.

Core

Recipes
Cookbooks
Roles
Data bags
Attributes
Chef Server
Chef Infra
Chef Compliance

Integrations

AWS
Azure
GCP
Docker

Security

Encrypted communication
Role-based access

Deployment

On-premise deployment
Cloud deployment

Platform

Linux support
Windows support
Mac support
Api support

People bring Chef in for configuration management and infrastructure automation across server fleets, enforcing compliance and audit policy on managed nodes. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to Chef are worth a look before you commit to a tier.

Before you pay for Chef

Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.

What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: 2 tiers between Free and $4000/year, with the jump itemised above. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.

Chef runs on linux, windows, mac, api, and is published by Chef Software of Seattle, WA. The full record is on the Chef review.

Chef pricing on the vendor's own site

Chef pricing questions

How much does Chef cost?: Chef publishes 2 tiers, from Free for Open Source up to $4000/year for Chef Automate. The entry tier costs nothing.
Does Chef have a free plan?: Yes. The Open Source tier costs nothing and covers chef infra, community support, full functionality. Paying starts at $4000/year for Chef Automate.
What is the difference between Open Source and Chef Automate on Chef?: Chef Automate costs $4000/year against Free, and adds compliance automation, insights, 24/7 support.
What am I actually paying for with Chef?: The record lists 20 features across 5 areas: core, integrations, security, deployment, platform. In practice it is brought in for configuration management and infrastructure automation across server fleets, enforcing compliance and audit policy on managed nodes.
Does Chef charge per user?: The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 2 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
Are these Chef prices current?: They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
What should I compare Chef against before paying?: Nothing else in this directory is filed close enough to Chef to make a useful price comparison.

Chef head to head

Compare Chef with anything