head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs terragrunt
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars, 1,414 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. terragrunt has 9,910 stars, 1,248 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 210% (30,703 vs 9,910 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 13%. 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 | ★ 31K | ★ 9.9K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 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
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 terragrunt
Terragrunt 🎉 Terragrunt v1.0 is here! Read the announcement to learn more. Terragrunt is a flexible orchestration tool that allows Infrastructure as Code written in OpenTofu/Terraform to scale. Please see the following for more info, including install instructions and complete documentation: Terragrunt Website Getting started with Terragrunt Terragrunt Documentation Terragrunt Scale Contributing to Terragrunt Commercial Support Join the Discord! Join our community for discussions, support, and contributions: License This code is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt.
read the full terragrunt overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or terragrunt more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars and terragrunt has 9,910. 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 (30,703 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose terragrunt if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.