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netbox-community/netbox

📈 Trending★ 20,438PythonAudience · ops devopsComplexity · 4/5ActiveLicenseSetup · hard

TLDR

Open-source network infrastructure management platform that serves as a central source of truth for network automation, covering IP address and data center management.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((NetBox))
    What it does
      IP address management
      Data center infrastructure
      Network documentation
      Automation source of truth
    Key features
      REST and GraphQL APIs
      Custom fields and tags
      Device config rendering
      Change logging
    Use cases
      Network automation workflows
      Infrastructure documentation
      Multi-tool orchestration
      Permission-based access control
    Tech stack
      Django framework
      Python backend
      Jinja2 templating
      PostgreSQL database

Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Build a centralized inventory of all network devices, IP addresses, and infrastructure across your organization.

USE CASE 2

Automate network configuration deployment by feeding NetBox data to Ansible, Salt, or custom scripts via APIs.

USE CASE 3

Track changes to network infrastructure with comprehensive audit logs and trigger automated responses via webhooks.

USE CASE 4

Manage multi-site data centers with custom fields, permissions, and device configuration templates.

Tech stack

PythonDjangoPostgreSQLREST APIGraphQLJinja2

Getting it running

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1day+

Requires PostgreSQL setup, Django migrations, and potentially multiple service dependencies for full network infrastructure management functionality.

Use freely for any purpose, including commercial use, as long as you include the original copyright notice and license text.

In plain English

NetBox is an open-source tool that acts as the central "source of truth" for everything in a computer network. Think of it as a structured database for the physical and logical pieces of network infrastructure, racks, devices, cables, IP addresses, VLANs, circuits from telecom providers, power feeds, VPNs, and more. Instead of tracking all this in spreadsheets, network engineers record the intended state of their network in NetBox. NetBox does not talk to network devices directly. Its job is to describe what the network should look like and make that description available to automation, monitoring, and assurance tools through programmable APIs. Device configurations can be generated by feeding NetBox's data through user-written Jinja2 templates and pushed to devices using external tools like Ansible or Salt. It also includes a customizable permission system, custom validation rules that block invalid changes or unsafe deletions, a custom-scripts feature that runs admin-defined workflows from the UI, automated event rules that fire scripts or webhooks when objects change, and a complete change log of every create, modify, and delete. You would use NetBox if you operate a network bigger than a few devices, a data center, an internet service provider, a large enterprise, and want one authoritative place automation tools can read from instead of scraping live equipment. It is also a successor to older IPAM (IP address management) and DCIM (data center infrastructure management) apps. NetBox is written in Python on the Django web framework, licensed Apache 2.0, with translations into 16 languages and managed cloud and enterprise editions from NetBox Labs.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
How do I set up NetBox to track all my network devices and IP addresses in one place?
Prompt 2
Show me how to query NetBox via REST API to get a list of all devices in a specific data center.
Prompt 3
How can I use Jinja2 templates in NetBox to auto-generate device configurations?
Prompt 4
What's the best way to integrate NetBox with Ansible so my playbooks pull device data automatically?
Prompt 5
How do I set up custom fields and tags in NetBox to organize my network infrastructure?
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Generated 2026-05-21 · Model: sonnet-4-6 · Verify against the repo before relying on details.