Ansible Tower Free | Fixed

The Short Answer There is no longer a free, standalone product called "Ansible Tower." Red Hat discontinued the free tier of Tower (which was limited to 10 nodes) in 2020. However, there are three legitimate ways to get the functionality for free today:

AWX (The Open Source Upstream Project) Red Hat Developer Subscription (For individual developers) Free 60-day Trial (For evaluation)

1. Deep Dive: AWX (The True Free Alternative) AWX is the open-source project that Red Hat uses to build the commercial Ansible Automation Platform (formerly Tower). It is 100% free and contains nearly all the features of Tower. What you get for free:

Web UI dashboard Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) Job templates and scheduling Inventory management (dynamic inventories) Credential management (encrypted) Workflow visualizer (graphical chaining of jobs) REST API Git/SCM integration (pull playbooks from GitHub, GitLab, etc.) Notifications (email, Slack, webhooks) ansible tower free

How to run AWX: | Method | Difficulty | Best for | |--------|------------|----------| | Kubernetes (K8s) | High | Production | | Docker (with Docker Compose) | Medium | Development / Small teams | | Vagrant/VirtualBox | Low | Learning / Testing | Important limitations vs. commercial Tower:

No official support (community support only via GitHub/IRC/Matrix) No "Automation Mesh" (the advanced hop node capability is limited in AWX) No "Automation Services Catalog" (self-service portal for end-users) No "Insights" integration (Red Hat's predictive analytics) More complex installation (requires Kubernetes expertise for production)

Example: Quick AWX with Docker Compose git clone https://github.com/ansible/awx.git cd awx/tools/docker-compose ansible-playbook -i inventory install.yml # Then access https://localhost:8043 (admin/password) The Short Answer There is no longer a

2. Red Hat Developer Subscription (Free for Individual Developers) Red Hat offers a no-cost Developer Subscription for individuals. This gives you a legal, fully-supported Ansible Automation Platform (which is the rebranded Tower) for up to 16 nodes . What you get:

Full Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) 2.x Official Red Hat support (via community forums and web tickets) Includes Automation Mesh, Execution Environments, etc. Valid for 1 year (renewable for free)

Restrictions:

Cannot be used for production (only development, testing, learning) Single user license Requires a Red Hat account (free to create)

How to get it: