head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs kics
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars, 1,414 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kics has 2,730 stars, 385 forks, 312 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 1,025% (30,703 vs 2,730 stars). OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0; kics is written in Open Policy Agent under Apache-2.0. OpenTofu has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, kics 14%. kics 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 | kics | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Open Policy Agent |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 385 |
| 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 kics if
- You want the kics feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Open Policy Agent
- You evaluated both and kics 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 kics
Find security vulnerabilities, compliance issues, and infrastructure misconfigurations early in the development cycle of your infrastructure as code with KICS by Checkmarx. KICS stands for K eeping I nfrastructure as C ode S ecure, it is open source and is a must have for any cloud native project. Supported Platforms <a href="
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or kics more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars and kics has 2,730. OpenTofu has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenTofu and kics free?
Both are open source. OpenTofu is licensed under MPL-2.0 and kics under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenTofu and kics?
OpenTofu is written in Go and kics in Open Policy Agent. 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 kics?
Choose OpenTofu if you want the larger community (30,703 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose kics if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.