Nautobot vs Netbox

How Nautobot differs from Netbox

Nautobot and NetBox are both open-source network infrastructure management tools, but they differ in several key ways:

Nautobot is a fork of NetBox, an open-source network source of truth platform, but Nautobot is designed with an emphasis on greater extensibility and automation.

Origins and Development

• NetBox was originally created by Jeremy Stretch at Digital Ocean
• Nautobot is a fork of NetBox, created in early 2021 by Network to Code

Architecture and Design Philosophy

• Nautobot was designed with a more pluggable architecture, focusing on extensibility through apps/plugins
• NetBox maintains a more monolithic core with plugin support added later

Key Technical Differences

1. Plugin System: Nautobot has a more robust plugin ecosystem and treats plugins as first-class citizens in its architecture
2. GraphQL: Nautobot added built-in GraphQL support alongside REST API
3. Job Framework: Nautobot includes a more comprehensive job scheduling and execution framework
4. Git Integration: Nautobot offers deeper Git integration for configuration management
5. Single Sign-On: Nautobot has enhanced SSO capabilities

Community and Support

• NetBox has a larger overall user base as the original project
• Nautobot has strong commercial support through Network to Code

Release Cycle

• They follow different development roadmaps and release schedules
• Some features may appear in one before the other

Both tools serve similar purposes in documenting and managing network infrastructure, IP address space, and rack/device management, but their different approaches to architecture and extensibility may make one more suitable than the other depending on your specific requirements.

Nautobot was initially developed as a fork of Netbox

Nautobot is an open source Network Source of Truth and Network Automation Platform. Nautobot was initially developed as a fork of NetBox (v2. 10.4), which was originally created by Jeremy Stretch at DigitalOcean and by the NetBox open source community.

Nautobot is geared more towards automation and in the following video I will go through some major differences.

To find out more about Netbox – check out my post on What is Netbox?