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

Gane Index, November 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://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/chef/alternatives

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

- Terraform: 148
- OpenTofu: 76
- Pulumi: 19
- Ansible: 8
- Spacelift: 5
- Terraform/OpenTofu: 3

## Infrastructure as code

**Small business**: 84 of 84 answers did not name Chef (Chef is #10 of 11 at 0%).

- Terraform: first choice in 46 of those 84
- OpenTofu: first choice in 35 of those 84
- Ansible: first choice in 7 of those 84
- Pulumi: first choice in 6 of those 84
- Terraform/OpenTofu: first choice in 2 of those 84
- AWS SAM: first choice in 1 of those 84
- Azure Bicep: first choice in 1 of those 84
- Terraform with Terraform Cloud: first choice in 1 of those 84

**Mid-market**: 83 of 84 answers did not name Chef (Chef is #13 of 13 at 0%).

- Terraform: first choice in 50 of those 83
- OpenTofu: first choice in 24 of those 83
- Pulumi: first choice in 5 of those 83
- Terraform with HCP Terraform: first choice in 2 of those 83
- Ansible: 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 #14 of 14 at 0%).

- Terraform: first choice in 52 of those 84
- OpenTofu: first choice in 17 of those 84
- Pulumi: first choice in 8 of those 84
- Spacelift: first choice in 5 of those 84
- AWS CloudFormation: first choice in 2 of those 84
- Scalr: first choice in 1 of those 84
- Terraform with HCP Terraform or Terraform Enterprise: first choice in 1 of those 84
- Terraform, specifically HCP Terraform / Terraform Enterprise: 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.