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VMware Aria Automation vs nOps comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 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

nOps
Ranking in Cloud Management
16th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
4.4
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Automation
Ranking in Cloud Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
172
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management (11th), Network Automation (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (29th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Cloud Management category, the mindshare of nOps is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Automation is 5.7%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
VMware Aria Automation5.7%
nOps0.9%
Other93.4%
Cloud Management
 

Featured Reviews

Tom Weeks - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. Director of Engineering at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Automates savings plan management and improves cost visibility while reducing cloud infrastructure needs
I find it to be a valuable cost-savings tool. Its best features include several things: first, it is hands-off, so I can set it and forget it. I get it set up, and it manages AWS savings plans on my behalf. This frees my team up to work on more valuable work without losing out on valuable discounts. It also provides a dashboard with more detailed insights into cost and AWS cloud costs than what comes out of the box with AWS Cost Explorer. Third, the nOps Kubernetes agent automatically resizes pods based on usage, which allows us to run significantly fewer EC2 instances than we would otherwise. nOps has positively impacted my organization by saving both time and money.
VasilisGiannitsiotis - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior IT at ITSolutions
Automation has streamlined complex financial workflows but still needs more intuitive orchestration
Something to improve in VMware Aria Automation would be related to VCF 9, as I do not know what it is trying to bring because they exposed it as the solution of everything. So VCF 9 will bring VCF Automation and VCF Operations, the new product line of VMware. I have not seen what this brings or what else it includes. Maybe in the area of vRealize Orchestrator, this would be beneficial because VRO can do everything. Perhaps a more user-friendly way to use that tool would be helpful because the possibilities there are endless. I am looking for more user-friendly navigation in VMware Aria Automation.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find it to be a valuable cost-savings tool; its best features include several things: first, it is hands-off, so I can set it and forget it, and it manages AWS savings plans on my behalf, freeing my team up to work on more valuable work without losing out on valuable discounts."
"nOps has positively impacted my organization by saving significant costs because we run many instances and shifted from on-demand to Spot, which resulted in substantial savings."
"The solution provides actionable reporting and cost-saving recommendations."
"Since making this shift, we have seen a twenty to thirty percent reduction in the total AWS compute expenditure, which represents a significant win for us."
"One customer saved 35 percent on their cloud bill, which is pretty significant."
"nOps smoothly integrated with our AWS infrastructure and achieved significant savings without much intervention from our internal team."
"It improves the work, making it better."
"We have faster delivery times through its automation."
"It's quite user friendly. Everyone can use it, even non-technical people. This is good, since we use it to build a self-service portal which even users with not a lot of technical background can use."
"SaltStack being so fast makes it very convenient and practical; allows me to get information about my servers in no time."
"The product saves a lot of time and cost for us. It has valuable features for creating a playbook."
"It's also absolutely easy and intuitive. It uses the same basic layout as the rest of the product suite so it's really easy to navigate, find your way around between the tabs and the areas."
"For a few years, when we needed a server, it took us three months to deliver one, and now we can bring one up in approximately 15 minutes."
"Integrating this tool with other technologies/third-party tools, that are not part of the VMware family, is the most valuable feature of this solution."
 

Cons

"From the features, I would like to see RDS RIs and maybe better visibility on how the engine is deciding whether to use spot or on demand, to replace the instance or not"
"At the same price currently offered, there should be lower percentages for some other packages because the service is currently offered at a very high cost percentage."
"The customer support is lacking but still pretty good."
"I suggest improving the heat map capability with the option to use showback values as the x and y-axis."
"However, it misses a perfect score because multi-cloud feature parity is still catching up to its gold-standard AWS toolset."
"There are a number of bugs and regression errors that can make it frustrating at times, but given the flexibility so far I have found adequate workarounds."
"More detailed documentation on implementing feature sets and more examples of real world processes would help."
"Stability has gotten a lot better. However, the vRO aspect, when you have a multi vRA head, is a little bit finicky still. vRO still needs to stay on one appliance and be one application, because, when you have two, you can't see runs on the other one that are happening when you're not logged into that one."
"A hardened set of tests would be much appreciated."
"Our current use cases aren't very complex, but as our environment grows, we're seeing a greater need for automation. We're considering expanding our automation efforts, especially since other competitive products are starting to offer similar features."
"There are some issues with stability. We discovered some bugs and we constantly have to work with VMware to figure out a way to fix them."
"Each new version seems to bring a new set of bugs to the table and upgrading is risky, especially for a tool at the core of the operations and infrastructure."
"As with all recent VMware products, more focus needs to be done on QA. I encountered far too many bugs for an enterprise product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, with ten being very expensive."
"From a budget point of view, the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
"The cost of the solution is reasonable for us. Although it is relatively high, we prioritize stability and integration over cost."
"They should provide one license for all the sub-products."
"The solution has helped to increase infrastructure, agility, speed, and provisioning in the time to market."
"It is an open-source product."
"This is an expensive product and the high price is starting to become an issue for us."
"The pricing is very high."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
20%
Comms Service Provider
18%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business33
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise131
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for nOps?
I did not purchase nOps through the AWS Marketplace because it is open source.
What needs improvement with nOps?
I believe nOps can be improved because in the era of AI, this tool is likely to experience reduced usage. They should offer AI-based innovations that help improve customers and assist them with the...
What is your primary use case for nOps?
My main use case for nOps is reducing costs on AWS spending and ensuring that workloads are running at minimum cost.I can provide a specific example of how I have used nOps to reduce costs and opti...
What's the difference between VMware vRA (automation) and vROps (operations)?
vROP is a virtualization management solution from VMWare. It is efficient and easy to manage. You can find anything you need from the software interface. It provides complete visibility over applic...
Is there any way to try VMware Aria Automation for free?
When it comes to VMware Aria Automation, you have three choices for free runs: Hands-on Lab (HOL) Advanced lab A free trial I cannot describe in detail the second and third options as my company ...
Which sectors can benefit the most from VMware Aria Automation?
I was looking at VMware Aria Automation case studies recently and I got the impression that three main kinds of companies were using it most often: Social organizations Financial institutions and ...
 

Also Known As

nOps - Cloud Optimization Platform
VMware vRealize Automation, vRA, VMware DynamicOps Cloud Suite, SaltStack
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Rent-a-Center, Amway, Vistra Energy, Liberty Mutual
Find out what your peers are saying about VMware Aria Automation vs. nOps and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.