head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs terratest
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars, 1,414 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. terratest has 7,989 stars, 1,366 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 284% (30,703 vs 7,989 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 | ★ 31K | ★ 8.0K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 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
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 terratest
Terratest Terratest is a Go library that makes it easier to write automated tests for your infrastructure code. It provides a variety of helper functions and patterns for common infrastructure testing tasks, including: Testing Terraform code Testing Packer templates Testing Docker images Executing commands on servers over SSH Working with AWS APIs Working with Azure APIs Working with GCP APIs Working with Kubernetes APIs Testing Helm Charts Making HTTP requests Running shell commands And much more Install Requires Go 1.26 or later. To lock to a specific release instead of @latest , see Pinning a Terratest…
read the full terratest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or terratest more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,703 GitHub stars and terratest has 7,989. 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 (30,703 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.