What is Chef used for?

Chef Infra is a configuration management tool that automates how infrastructure is configured, deployed and managed, using code written in Ruby. It is a good fit for configuring large server fleets, enforcing compliance through code and automating deployments across environments.

Yes. Chef is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at chef/chef and is written mainly in Ruby.

Yes. Chef is open source, so the software itself is free to use. Paid plans are also available, starting at $59 per seat per year.

Can I self-host Chef?

Yes. Chef can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What are some alternatives to Chef?

Similar open-source tools in the CI/CD & DevOps category include Salt Project, Ansible and Atlantis. SaaS products in the same category include Buddy, Octopus Deploy and GitHub Actions.

Is Chef actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Chef was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is v15.8.23, published on 20 February 2020. The project has 8.2k stars on GitHub.

Chef: open-source CI/CD & DevOps

About Chef

Chef Infra is a configuration management tool that brings automation to an organization's infrastructure by describing it as code. Servers, containers and cloud resources are configured and kept in the desired state through repeatable recipes, across any environment and at any scale.

The Chef ecosystem includes related products such as Chef Automate, Chef Habitat and Chef InSpec, and the project provides Learn Chef, a free self-paced learning platform with module-based training. The repository mainly serves the chef-client itself, so issues for other Chef projects belong in their own repositories. The project publishes monthly feature releases and yearly major releases with a documented support schedule, and states response-time targets for issues and pull requests.

Chef Infra is written in Ruby and licensed under Apache-2.0, with documentation, a community Slack and a mailing list. It is run by operations teams on their own servers, often together with a central Chef server, and suits sysadmins and DevOps engineers managing fleets of machines through infrastructure as code.

Key features

Infrastructure defined as code in Ruby
Configuration management for any environment
Free Learn Chef training platform
Related Automate, Habitat and InSpec tools
Monthly feature releases
Community Slack and forums

Good fit for

→Configuring large server fleets
→Enforcing compliance through code
→Automating deployments across environments

Built with: Ruby
Tags: configuration-management; infrastructure-as-code; devops; automation; ruby; chef; deployment; sysadmin

Chef: questions and answers

What is Chef used for?: Chef Infra is a configuration management tool that automates how infrastructure is configured, deployed and managed, using code written in Ruby. It is a good fit for configuring large server fleets, enforcing compliance through code and automating deployments across environments.
Is Chef open source?: Yes. Chef is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at chef/chef and is written mainly in Ruby.
Is Chef free?: Yes. Chef is open source, so the software itself is free to use. Paid plans are also available, starting at $59 per seat per year.
Can I self-host Chef?: Yes. Chef can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What are some alternatives to Chef?: Similar open-source tools in the CI/CD & DevOps category include Salt Project, Ansible and Atlantis. SaaS products in the same category include Buddy, Octopus Deploy and GitHub Actions.
Is Chef actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Chef was on 1 October 2026, and the latest release is v15.8.23, published on 20 February 2020. The project has 8.2k stars on GitHub.