head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs crossplane
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars, 1,414 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crossplane has 12,222 stars, 1,289 forks, 194 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 151% (30,703 vs 12,222 stars). OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0; crossplane is written in Go under Apache-2.0. OpenTofu has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, crossplane 11%. crossplane 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 | crossplane | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 12K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 crossplane if
- You want the crossplane 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 crossplane 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 crossplane
Crossplane is a framework for building cloud native control planes without needing to write code. It has a highly extensible backend that enables you to build a control plane that can orchestrate applications and infrastructure no matter where they run, and a highly configurable frontend that puts you in control of the schema of the declarative API it offers. Crossplane is a [Cloud Native Computing Foundation][cncf] project. Get Started Crossplane's [Get Started Docs] covers install and resource quickstarts. Releases Currently maintained releases, as well as the next few upcoming releases are listed below. For…
read the full crossplane overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or crossplane more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars and crossplane has 12,222. OpenTofu has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenTofu and crossplane free?
Both are open source. OpenTofu is licensed under MPL-2.0 and crossplane under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenTofu and crossplane?
OpenTofu is written in Go and crossplane 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 crossplane?
Choose OpenTofu if you want the larger community (30,703 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose crossplane if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.