head to head · open source
Pulumi vs aws-cdk
Pulumi has 25,694 GitHub stars, 1,431 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. aws-cdk has 12,899 stars, 4,631 forks, 2,863 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pulumi leads on adoption by 99% (25,694 vs 12,899 stars). Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0; aws-cdk is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Pulumi has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, aws-cdk 36%. Pulumi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (aws), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| Pulumi | aws-cdk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 4.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Pulumi if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick aws-cdk if
- You want the aws-cdk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and aws-cdk fits your workflow better
About Pulumi
Pulumi is an open source infrastructure as code tool that lets teams define and deploy cloud infrastructure using general purpose programming languages instead of YAML, aimed at developers, platform engineers, and agents working across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Kubernetes.
read the full Pulumi overview →
About aws-cdk
AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) is an open source software development framework for defining cloud infrastructure in code and provisioning it through AWS CloudFormation. It lives in the AWS ecosystem and ships under the Apache 2.0 license, with the core implementation written in TypeScript. The framework offers a high level object oriented abstraction that lets developers define AWS resources imperatively using modern programming languages rather than writing raw CloudFormation templates by hand.
read the full aws-cdk overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pulumi or aws-cdk more popular?
Pulumi has 25,694 GitHub stars and aws-cdk has 12,899. Pulumi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pulumi and aws-cdk free?
Both are open source. Pulumi is licensed under Apache-2.0 and aws-cdk under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pulumi and aws-cdk?
Pulumi is written in Go and aws-cdk in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Pulumi or aws-cdk?
Choose Pulumi if you want the larger community (25,694 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose aws-cdk if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.