SSH can be quicker, I believe ansibles use of SSH processes is more the issue. An old but still relevant benchmark exists in my pyinfra project which uses SSH (

SSH can be quicker, I believe ansibles use of SSH processes is more the issue. An old but still relevant benchmark exists in my pyinfra project which uses SSH (amongst other protocols) but a Python implementation, and its significantly quicker and more scalable than ansible: http://docs.pyinfra.com/en/1.x/performance.html http://docs.pyinfra.com/en/1.x/performance.html