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NetBrain 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

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
7.3
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Release Automation (3rd), Configuration Management (1st), AWS Pro Service Providers (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Network Automation category, the mindshare of NetBrain is 9.5%, down from 11.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform is 14.2%, down from 21.2% 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 Platform14.2%
NetBrain9.5%
Other76.3%
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.
Manas Kashyap - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior DevOps engineer at Elevenxcapital
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

"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that we don’t need an agent for it to work."
"Since it is in YAML, if I have to explain it to somebody else, they can easily understand it."
"We can manage all the configuration consistency between all our servers."
"The playbooks and the code the solution uses are quite useful."
"One of the most valuable features is that Ansible is agentless. It does not have dependencies, other than Python, which is very generic in terms of dependencies for all systems and for any environment. Being agentless, Ansible is very convenient for everything."
"RBAC is great around Organizations and I can use that backend as our lab. Ingesting stuff into the JSON logs, into any sort of logging collector; it works with Splunk and there are other collectors as well. It supports Sumo and that helps, I can go create reports in Sumo Logic. Workflows are an interesting feature. I can collect a lot of templates and create a workflow out of them."
"I like the agentless feature. This means we don't install any agent in worker nodes."
"The solution is capable of integrating with many applications and devices in comparison to BigFix."
 

Cons

"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"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."
"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 solution could integrate more automation."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"On the Dashboard, when you view a template run, it shows all the output. There is a search filter, but it would be nice to able to select one server in that run and then see all that output from just that one server, instead of having to do the search on that one server and find the results."
"It would be helpful to have templates for common configurations. It would make it much easier and faster rather than creating a whole script. The templates would decrease the learning curve as well."
"In modern infrastructure, there are more than just servers. The initial server-centric approach in Ansible is a bit strange."
"Accessibility. Ansible uses a CLI by default. Those accustomed to it can find their way and adopt the YAML files easily over time. But, some users are more comfortable using UIs..."
"It needs better documentation."
"The documentation for the installation step of deployment, OpenStack, etc., and these things have to be a bit more detailed."
"It should support more integration with different products."
"There are some options not available in the community edition of the solution."
 

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."
"We use the open-source version of the solution."
"Customers need to pay yearly for the license."
"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."
"It is a little pricey but it is affordable. It is not that bad."
"The pricing is okay."
"Ansible Tower is free. Until they lower the cost, we are holding off on purchasing the product."
"Ansible is a lot more competitive than any of the others. Its setup was also straightforward. In fact, we just implemented Ansible on OpenShift, so that is how we are running the Ansible Automation Platform now."
"We went with product because we have a subscription for Red Hat."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
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: January 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.