14 Best DevOps Tools to Use in Software Development
- DevOps
- August 20, 2025
Explore the top 14 DevOps tools reshaping modern software development. From CI/CD automation to container orchestration, version control, and infrastructure as code, each DevOps tool is evaluated for its core capabilities, ideal use cases, and business benefits. Whether you’re scaling delivery pipelines or improving team collaboration, this guide will help you choose the right DevOps toolchain for faster, more reliable software deployments.
The efficiency and effectiveness of your software development lifecycle depend on the DevOps toolchain you’ve adopted. The right selection of DevOps tools can benefit your business in terms of shipping high-quality software products faster with proper version control.
On the other hand, the wrong DevOps pipeline tool choice can lead to increased costs, multiple deployment attempts, decreased efficiency, and hindered collaboration, eventually leading to production failure. That means a higher chance of failure rates (CFR).
When talking about DevOps, the change failure rate can be up to 15% in high-performing teams and 46-60% in lower-performing teams. (Source: Atlassian) The major factors behind this include testing practice, CI/CD implementation, collaboration, deployment frequency, and rollback mechanism. And all of these are handled by DevOps tools.
Hence, in the blog, we’ve curated the 14 popular DevOps tools among high-performance teams for building, testing, deploying, monitoring, and managing software faster and smarter.
From containerization to automation and observability to IaC, this DevOps tools list is built for:
- DevOps and SREs who care about speed and stability
- Architects and tech leads navigating toolchain complexity
- Engineering leaders making scalable, cost-conscious decisions
- Developers and learners wanting tools that play well together, or exploring DevOps trends
Let’s explore automation DevOps tools shaping modern software delivery. But before that, don’t forget to read about the DevOps benefits in software development.
Top 14 DevOps Tools To Use To Streamline Software Development
From containerization and orchestration tools to CI/CD tools to DevOps automation tools, check out the DevOps toolchain you need to know to deploy software products precisely, flawlessly, and swiftly.
The following list outlines 14 prominent DevOps tools:
1. Jenkins
Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration automation server. It automates critical software development processes, including building, testing, and deploying, in a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) manner. Through this, it helps teams ship code faster and more reliably.
Jenkins’ automation engine allows DevOps teams to access and integrate the project changes easily and detect issues rapidly. It is tailored for projects of all sizes and complexities.
Written in Java, Jenkins supports hundreds of plugins that offer seamless integration of every existing DevOps lifecycle tool, including Docker, Kubernetes, Git, Maven, Gradle, Selenium, Puppet, Ansible, and more.
Key Features of Jenkins
- Automates building, testing, and deploying code in a CI/CD pipeline.
- Plugin-based architecture with 1,800+ community plugins.
- Supports distributed builds across multiple machines.
- Easily extensible and configurable via UI or Groovy scripts.
- Strong community and enterprise support.
Benefits of Jenkins
- Highly customizable with 1,800+ plugins.
- Supports continuous integration for any tech stack.
- Automates the entire build-test-deploy cycle.
- Integrates well with Docker, Kubernetes, Git, etc.
- Enables parallel execution for faster feedback.
- Scales horizontally with distributed builds on agents.
Pricing For Jenkins
- It’s an open-source tool.
2. Docker
Docker is a lightweight platform as a service that helps to ease and speed up software development, testing, and deployment with the help of OS-level virtualization. It does that by dividing software into standardized units containing libraries, system tools, code, and runtime. These units are called containers, and the process is called containerization.
Here, Docker is installed on each service, which enables you to control containers from building to starting to stopping.
Key Features:
- Docker CLI or Desktop, helping to quickly build, package, and deploy containerized applications.
- Docker Hub lets you explore many images from authentic publishers and the community.
- Standardized packaging format for different apps.
- Enables seamless collaboration between developers and operations teams.
- Docker AI Agent (“Gordon”) that suggests Dockerfile optimizations, helps in troubleshooting, and provides containerization guidance.
- Model Runner that allows running AI/ML models with GPU support on Windows, macOS, and Linux server operating systems.
- Native IPv6 support for flexible dual-stack networking.
- Embedded MCP Toolkit to launch secure agent-based workflows directly in Docker Desktop.
- Docker Buildx provides enhanced build capabilities for Docker images through BuildKit, offering features like multi-platform builds, improved caching, and support for various builder drivers.
Benefits of Docker
- Standardizes environments across dev, test, and production.
- Running AI/ML models inside containers with GPU acceleration.
- Accelerates onboarding by packaging apps with dependencies.
- Reduces resource usage with lightweight containers.
- Enables microservices architecture adoption.
- Simplifies CI/CD pipelines with consistent build images.
- Supports hybrid and multi-cloud deployments.
Docker Pricing Info
- Docker is free for personal use and comes with basic features, such as Docker Desktop, Docker Engine + Kubernetes, Docker Hub, and Docker Scout.
- Docker Pro is priced at $11 per user/month and comes with basic and advanced features
- Docker Team is priced at $16 per user/month and comes with tools that small teams need to collaborate better.
- Docker Business is the advanced enterprise model that’s priced at $24 per user/month and comes with security and compliance features
3. Kubernetes
Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source container orchestration platform. This platform is designed to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications built with Docker.
Originally developed by Google, it’s now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Kubernetes eases the application complexity with its containerization form, enabling them to run at scale, reliably, securely, and efficiently.
Key Features of Kubernetes
- Container orchestration helps automate application deployment, scaling, and rollback of containers across clusters.
- Service discovery & load balancing that routes the application traffic and scales it as needed.
- The self-help feature of it automatically replaces failed containers and restarts unresponsive pods.
- Automated rollouts & rollbacks contribute to the progressive deployment of the application with minimal manual efforts.
- Storage orchestration avails dynamic provisioning and attachment of various storage (such as local, Network-Attached Storage (NAS), and public cloud storage) to containerized applications.
- Uses ConfigMaps and Secrets to separate config from code.
- Kubelet Secure Bootstrapping that offers improved identity and TLS automation for safer cluster node registration.
Benefits of Kubernetes:
- Automates deployment, scaling, and management of containers.
- Ensures high availability with self-healing and auto-restarts.
- Supports zero-downtime deployments with rolling updates.
- Simplifies service discovery and load balancing.
- Enables efficient resource utilization via auto-scaling.
- Ideal for managing microservices in production at scale.
Pricing for Kubernetes:
- It’s mainly open-source, but different cloud providers (Google, Amazon, Azure, etc.) offering its managed services do offer paid plans.

4. CircleCI
CircleCI is one of the most used cloud-based CI/CD tools that automates the software development lifecycle, covering development, testing, and deploying code changes.
With its CI/CD nature, CircleCI aims to streamline software development workflows, improve code quality, and accelerate delivery with automation.
Unlike traditional tools that often require extensive setup and maintenance, CircleCI offers fast pipelines, native Docker support, and flexible configuration, all optimized for speed, scalability, and developer experience.
It’s available as both a cloud-hosted and self-hosted solution and can work on any operating system: Linux, macOS, Android, and Windows, making it a fit for teams ranging from lean startups to enterprise-scale deployments.
Key Features of CircleCI
- Docker-first architecture for container-native pipelines.
- Config-as-code with declarative YAML (.circleci/config.yml).
- Parallelism and caching to accelerate build/test cycles.
- Support for Windows, Linux, macOS, and Arm builds.
- Insights dashboard to track pipeline performance and bottlenecks.
- Native integrations with GitHub, Bitbucket, Slack, AWS, and more.
- Customizable workflows with orbs (reusable packages of CircleCI config).
Benefits of CircleCI
- Fast parallel builds with auto-scaling runners.
- Optimized performance with intelligent caching.
- Easy GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket integration.
- Clean UI with powerful pipeline insights.
- Built-in Docker support and Kubernetes-ready.
- Flexible plans for open-source projects, startups, and enterprises.
Pricing Information for CircleCI
- Free tier: 5 active users/month, up to 6,000 build minutes, 30x concurrency, and more.
- Performance Plan: $15/month, 3,000 credits, 80x concurrency, and more.
- Enterprise-level Scale Plan: Custom plans as per the requirements.
5. GitLab
GitLab is a web-based repository manager and AI-powered DevSecOps tool that manages the entire development lifecycle, from planning to coding to securing the build to deployment to ensuring observability. (But don’t get confused between DevOps vs DevSecOps.)
It comes with built-in features offering CI/CD pipeline, code review, issue tracking, version control, and more.
Thanks to its support for AI-powered workflows and automation of continuous delivery functions, it enhances developer productivity. Its built-in security capabilities, such as DAST, fuzz testing, container scanning, API screening, and security automation, ensure that your application is highly secure.
Moreover, it can scale enterprise workloads with nearly zero downtime, offer unparalleled metrics visibility, and provide cloud-native, multi-cloud, and legacy support. Most importantly, GitLab offers a lower total cost of ownership.
Key Features of GitLab
- Integrated CI/CD directly within your Git workflow.
- Auto DevOps to simplify pipeline setup with pre-built templates.
- Built-in security testing (SAST, DAST, container scanning, etc.).
- Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) support with Terraform integrations.
- Merge request approvals, code reviews, and audit logs.
- Custom runners to tailor builds for unique environments.
- Powerful RBAC and permissioning for enterprise governance.
- GitOps-ready deployments with Kubernetes and Helm.
Benefits of GitLab
- Makes software development cycle time 7x faster.
- AI-powered workflows improve developers’ productivity.
- Enhances code privacy with privacy-fire AI.
- Enforces security automation governance at every step.
- Offers flexible deployments with its fully managed single-tenant SaaS solution (because DevOps plays a key role in SaaS development).
- Access end-to-end metrics and visibility across the software delivery lifecycle.
- From planning to delivery, GitLab offers built-in enterprise agile delivery.
- Enforces a multi-cloud strategy with no vendor lock-in.
Pricing Information for GitLab
- Free tier: 400 CI/CD minutes/month, basic DevOps tools
- Premium: $29/user/month (advanced CI/CD + analytics)
- Ultimate: $99/user/month (full DevSecOps capabilities, governance, and compliance)
- Self-managed plans are available for full infrastructure control
6. Bitbucket
Bitbucket is a web-based Git repository hosting service. Being a part of the Atlassian product suite, Bitbucket is deeply integrated with Jira, Trello, and other products to perform code management, branching, merging, and more.
It also offers built-in CI/CD (Bitbucket Pipelines), making it a one-stop platform for modern DevOps workflows. With that, Bitbucket enforces proactive team collaboration on code for developing, testing, and deploying it with confidence.
Key Features of Bitbucket
- Git repositories that offer flexibility to different teams and projects.
- Pull requests allow developers to discuss code changes before pushing them to the source code.
- Has built-in tools offering in-depth code review with inline discussions and threaded conversations.
- Bitbucket CI/CD pipelines that automate building, testing, and code deployment in a stream.
- Jira and Trello integration help with issue tracking and visual task management, respectively.
- Built-in support for Docker and Kubernetes.
- Smart Mirroring for faster cloning in distributed teams.
- Secure and scalable access control.
Benefits of Bitbucket
- Teams already using Atlassian tools (Jira, Confluence, Trello).
- Organizations that want lightweight, built-in CI/CD without extra setup.
- Mid-sized to large development teams practicing Agile or Scrum.
- Repositories needing branch-level permissions and controlled deployments.
- Companies looking for on-premise hosting options with Data Center edition.
Pricing Information for Bitbucket
- Free: 5 users, unlimited private repos, basic Pipelines
- Standard: $3.30 per user/month (more build minutes, better permissions)
- Premium: $6.60 per user/month (deployment restrictions, merge checks, IP allowlisting)
- Data Center: Custom pricing for self-hosted enterprise deployment
7. Puppet
Puppet is a software configuration management tool used to automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration, and compliance across hybrid environments. You can make the most of it by writing infrastructure code in Puppet’s Domain-Specific Language (DSL), also called the Puppet Code, that supports different types of devices and operating systems.
It follows a client-server architecture with a declarative language to define system state. It ensures “what” the infrastructure should look like, not “how” to get there.
It’s widely used in enterprise environments to enforce consistent infrastructure, reduce drift, and automate repetitive tasks across thousands of servers.
Key Features of Puppet
- Declarative language (Puppet DSL) for defining infrastructure-as-code.
- Model-driven approach defines what to achieve and Puppet handles how.
- Idempotent execution ensures repeatable, predictable outcomes.
- Puppet Forge offers 8000+ pre-built modules for quick adoption.
- Compliance reporting with rich visual dashboards.
- Role-based access control (RBAC) and enterprise-grade auditing.
- Event-driven orchestration via Puppet Enterprise.
- Support for hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Benefits of Puppet
- Automates the configuration, deployment, and management of services and other IT infrastructure.
- Offers faster and more reliable deployment through an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach.
- Reduces downtime and enforces faster recovery.
- Enhances security and compliance through policy-as-code.
- Automates repetitive tasks to free up valuable IT staff and improve their overall operational efficiency.
- Enables efficient management of large and complex infrastructures.
- Provides visibility into the state of the infrastructure through reporting and monitoring capabilities.
- Can work on a wide range of OS and platforms: Windows, Linux distributions, and BSD.
Pricing Information for Puppet
- Core Free: 1 developer, <25 Nodes
- It’s paid after the 25+ Node.
- Paid for commercial, enterprise, and advanced operations with custom plans and pricing
8. Selenium
Selenium is a widely used, open-source framework that automates web application testing. Using this DevOps tool, software quality testers write test code in Python, Java, C#, and other languages to interact with web browsers programmatically. This test code has the capability to simulate user actions, such as clicking buttons, filling forms, and navigating between apps.
With this simulation, Selenium enables it to ensure front-end functionality works as expected across different browsers and platforms.
Key Features of Selenium
- Enables testing applications across web browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and more.
- Gives software testers and developers access to write test scripts in multiple programming languages: Java, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, C#, and more.
- Operates seamlessly on different operating systems: Windows, macOS, and Linux.
- Enables concurrent execution of tests across multiple browsers and environments when used with TestNG, JUnit, or Selenium Grid.
- Extensible through custom libraries, frameworks, and tools.
- Aligns well with W3C WebDriver standardization.
Benefits of Selenium
- Offers parallel and remote execution for faster feedback in CI/CD.
- Ensure the compatibility of your application across web browsers.
- Build custom frameworks and integrate with other DevOps tools.
- It has a massive open-source community support and plugin ecosystem.
Pricing for Selenium
- As Selenium is an open-source tool, it’s free to use under the Apache License 2.0.
9. Prometheus
Prometheus is an open-source, metrics-based monitoring and alerting toolkit. SoundCloud developed it for reliability, scalability, and deep visibility into modern, cloud-native infrastructure. Now, it’s a part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). Yes, the one is also managing Kubernetes. Hence, Prometheus is tightly integrated with the Kubernetes ecosystem.
It gathers metrics from various sources, leverages a time-series database to store metrics, and uses the tooling for querying, alerting, and visualization.
Key Features of Prometheus
- Highly dimensional data model where time series are defined by a metric name and enriched with key/value labels for contextual depth.
- PromQL, a powerful and expressive query language designed to exploit this label-based dimensionality.
- Self-contained architecture with no need for distributed storage, where each server node operates independently.
- Pull-based data collection over HTTP ensures control and transparency in how metrics are scraped.
- Push support is available via an optional intermediary gateway for components that can’t be scraped.
- Flexible service discovery mechanisms, including both dynamic discovery and static configuration, that make it easy to locate monitoring targets.
- Rich visualization options, including built-in graphing and integration with external dashboards like Grafana.
Benefits of Prometheus
- It’s cloud-native ready and supports dynamic, containerized environments.
- Fast and reliable for managing real-time metric collection and querying.
- Highly extensible to support enterprise-grade software development.
- Has strong open-source community support.
Pricing Information for Prometheus
- As Prometheus is an open-source tool, it’s free to use.
10. Datadog
Datadog is a SaaS platform, or, to be precise, cloud monitoring as a service, that offers observability and security services for cloud applications. It ensures that by automating monitoring for infrastructure, application performance, real users, logs, traces, security events, and more.
Datadog is built for dynamic, distributed environments like Kubernetes, microservices, serverless apps, and hybrid cloud setups. Think of it as your single source of truth for system health, performance, and incident insights.
Whether doing digital transformation or cloud migration, many organizations from across industries prefer to use Datadog to break silos between development, operations, security, and business teams. This helps them speed up application delivery, quickly resolve issues, know users better, secure apps and infrastructures, and stay up-to-date with business trends.
Key Features of Datadog
- Infrastructure monitoring with real-time dashboards, anomaly detection, and auto-scaling visualizations.
- Application performance monitoring through distributed tracing and detailed metrics.
- Log management enables teams to troubleshoot issues, identify security loopholes, and more.
- Real user monitoring provides insights into user behavior.
- Synthetic monitoring that simulates user journeys with API and browser tests.
- Database monitoring that provides insights on query performance, detects inefficient queries, and offers recommendations.
- Network monitoring provides insights into network performance.
- Serverless monitoring helps to detect and resolve performance issues.
- Universal service monitoring allows for the discovery, mapping, and monitoring of services without any code changes.
Benefits of Datadog
- 360° visibility over your stack in one tool.
- Faster incident response with correlation to logs, traces, and metrics in seconds.
- Lower tool fatigue, as there won’t be any need for multiple monitoring and alerting platforms.
- A strong ecosystem that offers seamless integration with cloud and DevOps pipelines.
- Enterprise-grade scalability, security, and audits for regulated industries.
Pricing for Datadog
- Free: 1-day metric retention, up to 5 hosts
- Pro: $15 per host/month, 900+ integrations, out-of-the-box dashboards, 15-month metric retention
- Enterprise: $23 per host/month, machine learning-based alerts, live processes
11. Git
Git is a modern distributed version control system that’s free and open-source. It sets the foundation for a modern DevOps framework and software collaboration.
Unlike centralized systems, Git gives every developer a full local copy of the repository, enabling branching, merging, reverting, and experimenting, all without impacting the main codebase until changes are pushed.
Git is a “three-tree” model:
- Working Directory (or Working Tree): It represents the current state of the project, where the developer is actually working.
- Staging Area (Index): It is where changes happen before committing them to the repository
- Local Repository (or Git Directory): It stores the entire history of the project, including all commits, branches, and tags.
Key Features of Git
- Branching & Merging that work on features, fixes, and experiments in isolation.
- A distributed architecture that enables every developer to access their full copy of code and version history on their machine.
- The staging area, also known as the index, helps to fine-tune changes in each commit.
- Commit History that enables developers to trace code versions in a time-stamped manner.
- Data integrity is maintained through cryptographic hashing (SHA-1) and proactive detection of accidental or malicious changes.
Benefits of Git
- Because it’s open-source, developers get the freedom to create branches, test changes, and roll back without fear.
- Enables parallel delivery through agile sprints and multiple releases at once.
- Offers full visibility into who changes what and when, making the code audit ready.
- Its cloud-agnostic nature makes it work with any CI/CD, platform, or IDE.
- Its Cloud-DevOps ecosystem is ready to support and integrate with Docker, Jenkins, Kubernetes, and more.
Pricing for Git
- It’s free and open-source.
12. Terraform
HashiCorp Terraform is a go-to tool for managing infrastructure as code. It helps to define everything, from cloud resources to on-prem setups, in plain text files that are easy to version, reuse, and share. What makes this tool loved by DevOps engineers is its consistency.
Once the config is done, spinning up or tearing down environments can be done using the same workflow every time. It handles the basics like servers, networks, and storage, but also scales up to things like DNS management or even SaaS integrations.
Terraform works in three steps: Write, Plan, and Apply.
Key Features of Terraform
- Declarative Syntax, which asks you to describe the desired state, and Terraform will look after the provisioning logic.
- Multi-Cloud Support for AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, VMware, Oracle, etc., and on-premises environments using a single tool and configuration.
- State Management that tracks infrastructure elements and determines what needs to be created, updated, or deleted when a configuration change occurs.
- Plan & Apply Workflow showcases a preview of changes to be made before execution.
- Modularity & Reusability enabling the creation of repeatable templates for standard infra patterns (VPC, ECS clusters, etc.).
- Extensible with Plugins for databases, SaaS apps, DNS, monitoring tools, etc.
- Workspaces for different workflows (such as development, testing, or production) with different configurations, variables, and policies.
- Remote Backend Support allows storing state files in remote backends, such as AWS S3, Azure Storage, or Terraform Cloud, facilitating collaboration and secure storage.
Benefits of Terraform
- Write once, provision anywhere with less manual setup.
- See every change before it happens with Terraform Plan.
- Use one language (HCL) across all major cloud providers.
- Track infrastructure changes like code with Git.
- Reuse modules to build faster and avoid duplication.
- Access a vast library of community plugins and templates.
- Catch and fix config drift before it breaks production.
- Integrate CI/CD pipelines for automated infrastructure delivery.
Pricing Information for Terraform
- Standard: $0.10 per month/resource ($0.00013/hr), Cloud provisioning, silver support, $500 trial credit.
- Plus: $0.47 per month/resource ($0.00064/hr) adds lifecycle automation + HCP Waypoint.
- Premium: $0.99 per month/resource ($0.00135/hr), secure, self-service workflow + full features.
13. Ansible
Ansible is an open-source automation engine that breaks down team silos and improves the efficiency of the software development lifecycle. From provisioning and configuration management to application deployment and orchestration to a lot more, Ansible automates all. It does that using simple, human-readable YAML files.
What this really means: Ansible lets teams automate routine tasks like patching, provisioning, or deploying apps across hundreds of servers with no agents to install and no complex scripting.
Key Features of Ansible
- Agentless architecture that runs over SSH with no daemons, agents, or open ports to manage.
- Supports idempotent execution that runs the same playbook multiple times, so the result stays consistent.
- 1000+ modules for cloud infrastructure, databases, network gear, containers, Kubernetes, etc.
- Modular design that comes with a vast library of modules to handle automation tasks, from managing files and services to interacting with cloud platforms and network devices.
- Inventory management is there for easy organization and targeting of specific groups of machines.
- Orchestration capabilities make Ansible coordinate complex workflows across multiple machines.
- The extensibility of Ansible allows developers to customize modules and plugins using various programming languages (Python) for specific needs.
Benefits of Ansible:
- No agents, no hassle, and fewer security and maintenance headaches.
- Faster automation ramp-up.
- Supports readable YAML playbooks, which lowers the learning curve.
- Uses the same language for server configuration, app deployment, containers, cloud, and network setup.
- Offers repeatable and reliable automation and ultimately reduces human errors and “it works on my machine” issues.
- Secure by design, it’s SSH-based and logs every action and supports secrets management.
- Enterprise-ready and scales with the organization, backed by control and governance.
Pricing Information for Ansible:
- The core Ansible software is free and open-source.
- Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform’s managed service is chargeable, but its billing is managed by a particular deployment partner (whichever you choose from AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, or Red Hat).
14. Chef
Chef is a powerful DevOps automation tool that transforms infrastructure into code. It allows DevOps teams to configure, deploy, and manage application infrastructure with cloud-to-edge security and compliance. It also enables them to define IaC to ensure that the system configurations are consistent, versionable, and testable across environments. Chef uses a pure Ruby DSL for writing system configuration “recipes.”
Key Features of Chef:
- IaC supportability allows declaratively managing infrastructure with reusable “cookbooks” and “recipes.”
- Idempotent in nature, which helps Chef ensure that the same outcome arrives every time a configuration is applied.
- Cross-platform supportability for infrastructure management.
- Chef Infra Server that manages nodes and applies configurations.
- Test-driven infrastructure that integrates with Chef InSpec for compliance automation.
- An extensive ecosystem based on community cookbooks.
Benefits of Chef:
- Ensures that infrastructure behaves the same way in development, staging, and production.
- Easily manage thousands of nodes across on-prem, cloud, and hybrid environments from a centralized Chef Infra Server.
- Automate the provisioning of servers and services for faster provisioning and deployment.
- Automate compliance and security audits with Chef InSpec.
- Customizability with reusable cookbooks.
- Integrates seamlessly with major cloud providers, container orchestration platforms, and CI/CD tools like Jenkins and GitLab.
Pricing Information for Chef:
- Business Tier: $59 per node/year; entry-level automation with standard support for non-prod workloads.
- Enterprise Tier: $189 per node/year; adds full automation, compliance, auditing, and enterprise-grade support.
- Enterprise Plus: custom quote; designed for security and compliance teams needing advanced features and premium SLAs.
Summing Up: Which DevOps Tools To Pick
There’s no one-size-fits-all DevOps tool list. Some tools specialize in automation, while some specialize in monitoring, orchestration, or version control. But at the end, what’s more important is selecting DevOps tools that fit your team’s goals, workflows, and scale.
Let’s take a look at the quick comparison table of top DevOps tools for a better idea and quick decision-making:
Tool | Core Purpose | Best For | Team Size Fit | Scalability | Pricing Model |
Docker | Containerization & packaging | Creating portable, lightweight environments | Small to Enterprise | High | Free + Paid tiers |
Kubernetes | Container orchestration | Managing large-scale container deployments | Mid to Enterprise | Very High | Open-source + Cloud pricing |
Jenkins | CI/CD automation server | Running jobs, pipelines, test builds | Small to Large | Moderate | Free (open source) |
CircleCI | CI/CD pipeline automation | Fast builds, parallel tests, cloud-native teams | Small to Medium | High | Free + Usage-based |
GitLab | DevOps lifecycle management | End-to-end SDLC from code to CI/CD | Any size | High | Free + Premium plans |
Bitbucket | Source code + CI/CD + Jira integration | Version control + CI in Atlassian ecosystem | Small to Medium | Moderate | Free + Paid plans |
Puppet | Infrastructure configuration & management | Automating server configurations at scale | Mid to Large | High | Open source + Enterprise |
Selenium | Web UI testing automation | Browser compatibility & functional testing | Any size | Moderate | Free (open source) |
Prometheus | Monitoring & alerting | Time-series metrics + alerts for infra/apps | Mid to Enterprise | High | Free (open source) |
Datadog | Monitoring, APM, and security | Full-stack observability across infra/apps | Any size | Very High | Paid (per host/service) |
Git | Source code version control | Tracking, branching, merging code changes | Any size | High | Free (open source) |
Terraform | Infrastructure as Code (IaC) | Provisioning cloud infrastructure declaratively | Mid to Enterprise | High | Free + Paid tiers |
Ansible | Configuration & automation | App deployment, updates, config management | Small to Large | High | Free + Paid (Red Hat) |
Chef | Configuration automation | Managing infrastructure as code (especially on-prem) | Mid to Enterprise | High | Open source + Enterprise |
Still confused? By answering these questions, you may get more clarity:
- Where is your DevOps process lagging, in speed, reliability, or visibility?
- Which tools can reduce repetitive work or bottlenecks?
- What fits best with your existing tech stack and team maturity?
The right combination of tools doesn’t just improve productivity but also how your team delivers software. It frees up time, improves quality, and helps your business ship faster without burning out your people.
In this, getting help from an experienced DevOps services company can also make your work a lot easier!

FAQs About Best DevOps Tools
Jenkins is one of the most widely used DevOps tools, especially for continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD).
The 7 phases of DevOps include Plan, Develop, Build, Test, Release, Deploy, and Monitor.
Jenkins, GitLab, Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and Prometheus are projected to be in high demand in future.
Jenkins is a self-managed, open-source CI/CD tool with deep customization, while CircleCI is a cloud-native CI/CD platform focused on simplicity and speed.
Yes, Docker remains highly relevant in future for containerization and DevOps workflows. This includes:
– Packaging applications consistently across environments
– Enabling microservices architecture
– Supporting CI/CD pipelines and testing
– Running containers locally before pushing to Kubernetes or other systems
Yes, most modern DevOps tools can be integrated into a unified CI/CD pipeline, like GitHub or GitLab for version control, Jenkins for CI, Docker for containerization, Kubernetes for deployment, Prometheus + Grafana for monitoring, and Terraform for IaC.
Docker, Jenkins, CircleCI, Bitbucket, and Ansible are considered the best DevOps tools for small teams and startups.