head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs itamae
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars, 1,414 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. itamae has 1,134 stars, 117 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 2,607% (30,703 vs 1,134 stars). OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0; itamae is written in Ruby under MIT. OpenTofu has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, itamae 10%. 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 | itamae | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 117 |
| 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 itamae if
- You want the itamae feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and itamae 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 itamae
Simple and lightweight configuration management tool inspired by Chef. CHANGELOG Concept Chef like DSL (but not compatible with Chef) Simpler and lighter weight than Chef Only recipes Idempotent Installation Getting Started Create a recipe file as recipe.rb : And then execute itamae command to apply a recipe to a local machine. Or you can apply a recipe to a remote machine by itamae ssh . You can also apply a recipe to Vagrant VM by itamae ssh vagrant . You can find further information to use Itamae on Itamae Wiki. Enjoy! Documentation Run tests Requirements: Vagrant Get Involved Join Slack team Presentations /…
read the full itamae overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or itamae more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars and itamae has 1,134. OpenTofu has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenTofu and itamae free?
Both are open source. OpenTofu is licensed under MPL-2.0 and itamae under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenTofu and itamae?
OpenTofu is written in Go and itamae 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 itamae?
Choose OpenTofu if you want the larger community (30,703 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose itamae if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.