head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs terragrunt
OpenTofu has 30,209 GitHub stars, 1,368 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. terragrunt has 9,837 stars, 1,227 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 207% (30,209 vs 9,837 stars). OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0; terragrunt is written in Go under MIT. OpenTofu has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, terragrunt 12%. terragrunt 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 | terragrunt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 9.8K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 terragrunt if
- You want the terragrunt feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and terragrunt 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 terragrunt
Terragrunt is an MIT licensed, Go based orchestration tool that lets Infrastructure as Code written in OpenTofu or Terraform scale, and it is built for DevOps and cloud infrastructure teams that already run that tooling.
read the full terragrunt overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or terragrunt more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,209 GitHub stars and terragrunt has 9,837. OpenTofu has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenTofu and terragrunt free?
Both are open source. OpenTofu is licensed under MPL-2.0 and terragrunt under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenTofu and terragrunt?
OpenTofu is written in Go and terragrunt 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 terragrunt?
Choose OpenTofu if you want the larger community (30,209 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose terragrunt if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.