head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs dagger
OpenTofu has 30,204 GitHub stars, 1,367 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dagger has 16,261 stars, 924 forks, 156 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 86% (30,204 vs 16,261 stars). OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0; dagger is written in Go under Apache-2.0. OpenTofu has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, dagger 6%. dagger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| OpenTofu | dagger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 16K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 924 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenTofu if
- You weight community size — 30K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dagger if
- You want the dagger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dagger fits your workflow better
About OpenTofu
OpenTofu is an open source infrastructure as code (IaC) tool that enables users to define and manage cloud and on premises infrastructure using declarative configuration files. It lives in the cloud infrastructure management ecosystem and serves as a community driven fork of Terraform, maintaining compatibility with Terraform’s configuration language and provider ecosystem while operating under the MPL 2.0 license.
read the full OpenTofu overview →
About dagger
Dagger is an open source automation engine for software delivery, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It builds, tests and ships any codebase, and it runs locally, inside a CI server, or directly in the cloud. The project lives in the cloud infrastructure and CI/CD ecosystem, where it occupies the space normally filled by shell scripts and proprietary pipeline YAML. It has been developed for roughly seven years and carries a substantial community footprint, with more than sixteen thousand stars and over nine hundred forks on GitHub.
read the full dagger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or dagger more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,204 GitHub stars and dagger has 16,261. OpenTofu has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenTofu and dagger free?
Both are open source. OpenTofu is licensed under MPL-2.0 and dagger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenTofu and dagger?
OpenTofu is written in Go and dagger in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, OpenTofu or dagger?
Choose OpenTofu if you want the larger community (30,204 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose dagger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.