Infrahub vs. Obelinf: a technical analysis in 2026

Infrastructure data management is one of those spaces where every tool claims to be the answer, and every team eventually discovers that the answer depends on what question they were actually asking. Infrahub, built by OpsMill, is the newest entrant with serious ambition. It positions itself as a graph based data management platform with native version control, CI workflows, and peer review, built to power network and infrastructure automation at scale. Obelinf takes a different path: a managed platform focused on making infrastructure documentation fast, accessible, and zero maintenance.

Both tools want to be the place where your infrastructure data lives. They get there through very different architectural choices, and those choices have real consequences for your team.

Infrahub is an automation platform that stores data

Infrahub is not primarily a documentation tool. It is an automation data platform that happens to store infrastructure data. The distinction matters because it shapes every design decision in the product.

Infrahub uses a graph database (Neo4j) as its foundation. You define schemas that model your infrastructure as nodes and relationships, and you query that graph using GraphQL. On top of that, Infrahub layers Git style version control: you can create branches, make changes in isolation, open proposed changes, run CI checks, and merge approved work back into the main branch. The idea is to treat infrastructure data the way software teams treat code, with peer review, validation, and a complete audit trail.

The automation layer is where Infrahub invests heavily. Generators create infrastructure objects from templates. Transformations render configurations using Jinja2 or Python. Artifacts are versioned alongside the data that produced them. Integrations with Ansible and Nornir let you push configurations to devices directly from Infrahub. The Python SDK and CLI tool (infrahubctl) give developers programmatic access to everything.

This is a powerful model for teams that want infrastructure automation as their primary use case. If your team’s main goal is to generate configurations, validate them through a CI pipeline, and deploy them to devices, Infrahub gives you a coherent workflow for all of that.

Obelinf is an infrastructure management platform that works out of the box

Obelinf is built for a different audience: teams that need to document, visualize, and manage their infrastructure without spending weeks on deployment and configuration. It is a managed web application. You sign up, and it works.

The core of Obelinf is a relational data model that connects sites, racks, devices, interfaces, cables, IP addresses, subnets, VLANs, VRFs, circuits, and contacts into a single connected graph. Everything is linked, and navigating those connections is effortless. You do not need to define schemas, write transformations, or configure a graph database. The data model is built for infrastructure management from the ground up.

Search works across every entity and every attribute. Find a device by serial number, locate an IP by hostname, or pull up all circuits from a specific provider. Results are connected, not isolated, so you see the full context of what you are looking for.

Every change is tracked automatically. The changelog records every create, update, and delete with the user, timestamp, and field level diffs. You get a complete audit trail without any configuration or additional tools.

The interface is fast, responsive, and designed for keyboard driven workflows. A command palette lets you jump to any entity type instantly. Rack elevation visualizations and interactive network topology diagrams give you visual representations of your infrastructure that update in real time as your data changes.

Deployment and operational overhead

This is where the two platforms diverge most sharply.

Infrahub requires you to run and maintain several components. At minimum, you need Neo4j as the graph database, a task worker for background operations, and the Infrahub application itself. For production deployments, OpsMill recommends Docker Compose or Kubernetes. The Community edition runs on Neo4j Community, while Enterprise uses Neo4j Enterprise with high availability clustering. Backups are your responsibility, and the upgrade process involves coordinating changes across multiple services.

For teams with dedicated platform engineering resources, this is manageable. For smaller teams, it represents a significant ongoing commitment. Every upgrade means pulling new container images, running database migrations, and verifying that your custom schemas and integrations still work. Every outage means tracing through logs from multiple services to identify which component failed. The infrastructure you need to run Infrahub becomes another thing to manage, another dependency to watch, and another potential source of problems.

Obelinf eliminates this entirely. There is nothing to deploy, configure, update, back up, or monitor. You access it through your browser and it works. The platform handles all of the operational burden, so your team can focus on managing infrastructure instead of managing the tool that manages your infrastructure.

Version control and change management

Infrahub’s version control is one of its strongest differentiators. The Git style branching model lets you create isolated branches, make changes, and propose merges with full diff views and CI validation. Every change moves through a branch, proposed change, review, and merge workflow. The immutable history gives you a complete record of every modification, who made it, and why.

This workflow is genuinely powerful for teams that want to treat infrastructure changes with the same rigor as code changes. If you need to validate that a schema change will not break existing automation, or review a bulk IP reassignment before it goes live, Infrahub’s approach gives you tools that no other infrastructure management platform offers.

Obelinf handles change tracking differently but achieves a similar goal. Every create, update, and delete is logged automatically with the user, timestamp, and field level diffs. There is no branching model, but the audit trail is complete and always available. For most infrastructure management workflows, this is sufficient. You can see what changed, when it changed, and who changed it, which covers the vast majority of audit and compliance requirements.

The tradeoff is clear: Infrahub gives you a software development workflow applied to infrastructure data, while Obelinf gives you automatic, zero effort change tracking. Which one matters more depends on how your team manages changes.

Schema flexibility and data modeling

Infrahub’s schema system is deeply flexible. You define your own data models using a schema language, and you can extend or modify those models at any time. The graph database means relationships between entities are first class citizens, and you can traverse complex dependency chains efficiently. The Schema Library provides ready to use schemas for common infrastructure patterns, and you can build custom schemas for anything that does not fit.

This flexibility is a double edged sword. It means you can model exactly what you need, but it also means you need to invest time upfront in designing your schema. Teams that get the schema right end up with a powerful, customized platform. Teams that get it wrong end up with a messy data model that is hard to evolve.

Obelinf’s data model is purpose built for infrastructure management. Sites contain racks. Racks hold devices. Devices have interfaces. Interfaces connect via cables. IP addresses live in subnets. Subnets belong to VLANs. The model is fixed but comprehensive, covering the entities and relationships that infrastructure teams actually need to manage. You do not need to design a schema or make modeling decisions. The system is ready to use from the moment you sign up.

Pricing and total cost

Infrahub Community is free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license. Infrahub Enterprise starts at forty thousand dollars per year and scales based on compute resources. The Community edition includes core features like schema customization, version control, and CI integration, but limits you to community support and single instance deployment.

Obelinf offers a free tier for personal use and paid plans for teams demanding scale.

When evaluating total cost, consider not just the license fee but the operational cost. Running Infrahub yourself means paying for servers, storage, backups, monitoring, and the engineering time to maintain all of it. Obelinf’s managed model eliminates those costs entirely. For many teams, the total cost of a self hosted Infrahub deployment exceeds the cost of a managed Obelinf subscription, especially when you factor in the engineering time required to keep the platform running.

How Obelinf Solves This

Obelinf is a network and infrastructure management platform built for teams that want to document and manage their infrastructure without the operational burden of self hosting. It covers IPAM, DCIM, circuit management, virtualization tracking, cable management, and contact management in a single managed platform.

There is nothing to deploy, configure, update, back up, or monitor. You sign up through your browser and start working immediately. The interface is fast, responsive, and designed for keyboard driven workflows, with a command palette that lets you jump to any entity type instantly.

Every change is tracked automatically with user, timestamp, and field level diffs. Multi tenancy is built in with full organization isolation and role based access control. The REST API covers the entire data model with consistent patterns designed for automation from the start.

Obelinf supports rack elevation visualizations, interactive network topology diagrams, VLAN and VRF tracking, tagging across all entities, and search that works across every entity and every attribute. It scales from a small homelab to thousands of devices across dozens of locations, and it is free for personal use.

If you want the data management capabilities without the self hosting commitment, Obelinf is worth a look. Start free at obelinf.com and see how it fits your workflow.