head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs infracost
OpenTofu has 30,204 GitHub stars, 1,367 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. infracost has 12,521 stars, 688 forks, 22 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 141% (30,204 vs 12,521 stars). OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0; infracost is written in Go under Apache-2.0. OpenTofu has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, infracost 5%. 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 | infracost | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 13K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 688 |
| 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 infracost if
- You want the infracost 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 infracost 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 infracost
Infracost is an open source cloud cost intelligence tool, written in Go and licensed Apache 2.0, that estimates cloud spend and enforces FinOps policies for Terraform, Terragrunt, CloudFormation and AWS CDK before changes are deployed — built for engineers, platform and DevOps teams, FinOps practitioners, and AI coding agents.
read the full infracost overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or infracost more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,204 GitHub stars and infracost has 12,521. OpenTofu has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenTofu and infracost free?
Both are open source. OpenTofu is licensed under MPL-2.0 and infracost under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenTofu and infracost?
OpenTofu is written in Go and infracost 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 infracost?
Choose OpenTofu if you want the larger community (30,204 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose infracost if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.