head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs chef
OpenTofu has 30,209 GitHub stars, 1,368 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. chef has 8,238 stars, 2,519 forks, 411 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 267% (30,209 vs 8,238 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%. chef 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 | ★ 30K | ★ 8.2K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| 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 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
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 chef
Chef Infra configuration management tool for automating infrastructure configuration, deployment, and management across any environment, at any scale, for DevOps engineers and infrastructure teams.
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or chef more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,209 GitHub stars and chef has 8,238. 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 (30,209 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.