head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs terratest
OpenTofu has 30,209 GitHub stars, 1,368 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. terratest has 7,943 stars, 1,371 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 280% (30,209 vs 7,943 stars). OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0; terratest is written in Go under Apache-2.0. OpenTofu has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, terratest 17%. 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 | terratest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 7.9K |
| 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 terratest if
- You want the terratest 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 terratest 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 terratest
Terratest is an Apache 2.0 Go library maintained by Gruntwork that provides helper functions and patterns for writing automated tests against infrastructure code, and it is aimed at engineers who validate Terraform modules, Packer templates, Docker images, Kubernetes resources and AWS, Azure or GCP infrastructure inside a Go test suite.
read the full terratest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or terratest more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,209 GitHub stars and terratest has 7,943. OpenTofu has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenTofu and terratest free?
Both are open source. OpenTofu is licensed under MPL-2.0 and terratest under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenTofu and terratest?
OpenTofu is written in Go and terratest 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 terratest?
Choose OpenTofu if you want the larger community (30,209 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose terratest if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.