head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs sops
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars, 1,414 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sops has 23,586 stars, 1,113 forks, 446 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 30% (30,703 vs 23,586 stars). OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0; sops is written in Go under MPL-2.0. OpenTofu has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, sops 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 | sops | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 24K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 sops if
- You want the sops feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and sops 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 sops
SOPS: Secrets OPerationS ======================== SOPS is an editor of encrypted files that supports YAML, JSON, ENV, INI and BINARY formats and encrypts with AWS KMS, GCP KMS, Azure Key Vault, HuaweiCloud KMS, age, and PGP. ( demo ) .. image:: .. image:: :target: Documentation You can find the SOPS documentation on getsops.io under "Docs" . Security Please report any security issues privately using GitHub's advisory form . License Mozilla Public License Version 2.0 Authors SOPS was initially launched as a project at Mozilla in 2015 and has been graciously donated to the CNCF as a Sandbox project in 2023, now…
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or sops more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars and sops has 23,586. OpenTofu has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenTofu and sops free?
Both are open source. OpenTofu is licensed under MPL-2.0 and sops under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenTofu and sops?
OpenTofu is written in Go and sops 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 sops?
Choose OpenTofu if you want the larger community (30,703 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose sops if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.