head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs chef
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars, 1,414 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. chef has 8,259 stars, 2,521 forks, 411 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 272% (30,703 vs 8,259 stars). OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0; chef is written in Ruby under Apache-2.0. OpenTofu has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, chef 31%. OpenTofu 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 | chef | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 8.3K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenTofu if
- You weight community size — 31K 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 chef if
- You want the chef feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and chef fits your workflow better
About OpenTofu
Homepage Slack Get Started OpenTofu is an OSS tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. OpenTofu can manage existing and popular service providers as well as custom in house solutions. Getting help and contributing Have a question? Post it in GitHub Discussions Open a GitHub issue Join us in the opentofu channel on the CNCF Slack! Want to contribute? Please read the Contribution Guide. Recurring Events Community Meetings on Wednesdays at 12:30 UTC (calendar) Technical Steering Committee Meetings every other Tuesday at 4pm UTC (calendar) [!TIP] For more OpenTofu events…
read the full OpenTofu overview →
About chef
Chef Infra Umbrella Project : Chef Infra Project State : Active Issues Response Time Maximum : 14 days Pull Request Response Time Maximum : 14 days Getting Started Chef Infra is a configuration management tool designed to bring automation to your entire infrastructure. Want to try Chef Infra? For Chef Infra usage, please refer to Learn Chef, our self paced, entirely free learning platform. Learn Chef also includes module based training for Chef Infra, as well as Chef Automate, Chef Habitat, and Chef InSpec. Other useful resources for Chef Infra users: Documentation: Source: Tickets/Issues: Slack: Chef Community…
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or chef more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars and chef has 8,259. OpenTofu has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenTofu and chef free?
Both are open source. OpenTofu is licensed under MPL-2.0 and chef under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenTofu and chef?
OpenTofu is written in Go and chef in Ruby. 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 chef?
Choose OpenTofu if you want the larger community (30,703 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose chef if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.