# Ansible vs Ansible Tower ?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-vs-ansible-tower/27075>\
**Category:** Ansible Project\
**Created:** [March 22, 2018, 11:32am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-vs-ansible-tower/27075 "2018-03-22T11:32:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Albert\_Shamsiyan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Albert\_Shamsiyan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Albert_Shamsiyan)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2018, 11:32am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-vs-ansible-tower/27075/1 "2018-03-22T11:32:59Z")

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I’m confused. From what I’ve understood, There are Ansible and Ansible Tower.

Ansible is for free while Ansible Tower costs. True \ False?

In case True,

1. Where can I find comparison matrix ? \ What is the difference ??

2. Where to download from ?

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**Author:** ![sdoran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@sdoran](https://forum.ansible.com/u/sdoran)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2018, 3:13pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-vs-ansible-tower/27075/2 "2018-03-22T15:13:23Z")

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Ansible is the command line tool that does most of the work while Ansible Tower is a web application that provides a REST API, RBAC, secure credential storage, and a scheduler (among other things) _on top of_ Ansible the command line tool. You can’t have Ansible Tower without Ansible, so comparing them directly is not quite accurate.

More info here:

[https://www.ansible.com/products/tower/editions](https://www.ansible.com/products/tower/editions)  
[https://www.ansible.com/products/tower/trial](https://www.ansible.com/products/tower/trial)  
[https://www.ansible.com/products/awx-project/faq](https://www.ansible.com/products/awx-project/faq)

> **[GitHub - ansible/awx: AWX provides a web-based user interface, REST API,...](https://github.com/ansible/awx)**
>
> AWX provides a web-based user interface, REST API, and task engine built on top of Ansible. It is one of the upstream projects for Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

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**Author:** ![Albert\_Shamsiyan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Albert\_Shamsiyan](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Albert_Shamsiyan)\
**Post date:** [March 22, 2018, 4:05pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-vs-ansible-tower/27075/3 "2018-03-22T16:05:37Z")

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Thx for the reply sdoran

So using Ansible is for free and I’ll licensing for using Tower for more than 10 nodes? if so, what will be the definition if node ??

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**Author:** ![sdoran](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@sdoran](https://forum.ansible.com/u/sdoran)\
**Post date:** [March 23, 2018, 1:51pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-vs-ansible-tower/27075/4 "2018-03-23T13:51:04Z")

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A node is a host in inventory that is managed by Tower.

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**Author:** ![Chris\_DiGiovanni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b38774/32.png) [@Chris\_DiGiovanni](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Chris_DiGiovanni)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2018, 4:11pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/ansible-vs-ansible-tower/27075/5 "2018-03-26T16:11:05Z")

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Ansible Tower’s upstream opensource project is called AWX. If you don’t want to pay for support you can always go AWX instead of Ansible Tower. [https://github.com/ansible/awx](https://github.com/ansible/awx)