Free automation tools for Windows admins: Chocolatey package manager, Ansible playbooks, SikuliX visual scripting and Power Automate for desktop.
Command-line package manager for Windows. Install, upgrade and remove software unattended with choco, from the community repository or your own internal feed. Chocolatey CLI is free and open source (Apache 2.0).
Ansible is a free, open-source, agentless automation tool. Describe servers in YAML playbooks and Ansible applies them over SSH or WinRM: patching, software, services, scheduled tasks and config files across Windows and Linux fleets.
SikuliX automates desktop apps by recognising what is on screen and driving mouse and keyboard with Jython scripts. It is free (MIT) but discontinued: 2.0.5 (2021) is final, and the maintained continuation is the OculiX fork.
Microsoft’s RPA tool for Windows and the successor of WinAutomation. Build desktop flows that automate apps, files, Excel and web pages with 400+ actions and a recorder. Shareware (conditionally free): personal attended use comes with Windows 10/11; sharing and unattended runs need a paid plan.
