# Chef alternatives: what AI models name instead, October 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition. 251 of the 252 answers in the 1 category where Chef holds a standing named it neither first nor as an alternative; these are the first choices those answers made. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/vendors/chef/alternatives/

## Named instead, most often (every category and segment added)

- Terraform: 141
- OpenTofu: 76
- Pulumi: 19
- Ansible: 9
- Terraform/OpenTofu: 9
- AWS CloudFormation: 4

## Infrastructure as code

**Small business**: 84 of 84 answers did not name Chef (Chef is #10 of 10 at 0%).

- Terraform: first choice in 56 of those 84
- OpenTofu: first choice in 34 of those 84
- Pulumi: first choice in 9 of those 84
- Ansible: first choice in 5 of those 84
- Terraform/OpenTofu: first choice in 4 of those 84
- AWS CloudFormation: first choice in 1 of those 84
- Terraform using HCP Terraform's Free plan: first choice in 1 of those 84

**Mid-market**: 83 of 84 answers did not name Chef (Chef is #11 of 12 at 0%).

- Terraform: first choice in 43 of those 83
- OpenTofu: first choice in 28 of those 83
- Ansible: first choice in 4 of those 83
- Terraform with HCP Terraform: first choice in 2 of those 83
- Pulumi: first choice in 1 of those 83
- Terraform/OpenTofu: first choice in 1 of those 83

**Enterprise**: 84 of 84 answers did not name Chef (Chef is #13 of 13 at 0%).

- Terraform: first choice in 42 of those 84
- OpenTofu: first choice in 14 of those 84
- Pulumi: first choice in 9 of those 84
- Terraform/OpenTofu: first choice in 4 of those 84
- AWS CloudFormation: first choice in 3 of those 84
- Spacelift: first choice in 3 of those 84
- AWS CDK: first choice in 1 of those 84
- Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform: first choice in 1 of those 84

Published under CC BY 4.0. The output is the models' output; nothing here is a recommendation by the index.