head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs kcl
OpenTofu has 30,204 GitHub stars, 1,367 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kcl has 2,415 stars, 170 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 1,151% (30,204 vs 2,415 stars). OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0; kcl is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. OpenTofu has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, kcl 7%. 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 | kcl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 170 |
| 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 kcl if
- You want the kcl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and kcl 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 kcl
KCL is an open source, constraint based record and functional language, hosted as a CNCF Sandbox project and licensed under Apache 2.0, for platform engineers, DevOps teams, and cloud native practitioners who need to write, validate, and manage complex configuration without hand maintaining raw YAML or JSON.
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or kcl more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,204 GitHub stars and kcl has 2,415. OpenTofu has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenTofu and kcl free?
Both are open source. OpenTofu is licensed under MPL-2.0 and kcl under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenTofu and kcl?
OpenTofu is written in Go and kcl in Rust. 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 kcl?
Choose OpenTofu if you want the larger community (30,204 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose kcl if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.