head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs Pulumi
OpenTofu has 30,204 GitHub stars, 1,367 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pulumi has 25,694 stars, 1,431 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 18% (30,204 vs 25,694 stars). OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0; Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0. OpenTofu has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Pulumi 6%. Pulumi 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 | Pulumi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 26K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 Pulumi if
- You want the Pulumi 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 Pulumi 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 Pulumi
Pulumi is an open source infrastructure as code tool that lets teams define and deploy cloud infrastructure using general purpose programming languages instead of YAML, aimed at developers, platform engineers, and agents working across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Kubernetes.
read the full Pulumi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or Pulumi more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,204 GitHub stars and Pulumi has 25,694. OpenTofu has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenTofu and Pulumi free?
Both are open source. OpenTofu is licensed under MPL-2.0 and Pulumi under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenTofu and Pulumi?
OpenTofu is written in Go and Pulumi 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 Pulumi?
Choose OpenTofu if you want the larger community (30,204 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose Pulumi if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.