head to head · open source
Pulumi vs chef
Pulumi has 25,695 GitHub stars, 1,431 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped today. chef has 8,238 stars, 2,519 forks, 411 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pulumi leads on adoption by 212% (25,695 vs 8,238 stars). Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0; chef is written in Ruby under Apache-2.0. Pulumi has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, chef 31%. Pulumi 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
| Pulumi | chef | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 8.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| 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 chef if
- You want the chef feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and chef 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 chef
Chef Infra configuration management tool for automating infrastructure configuration, deployment, and management across any environment, at any scale, for DevOps engineers and infrastructure teams.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pulumi or chef more popular?
Pulumi has 25,695 GitHub stars and chef has 8,238. Pulumi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pulumi and chef free?
Both are open source. Pulumi is licensed under Apache-2.0 and chef under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pulumi and chef?
Pulumi is written in Go and chef in Ruby. 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 chef?
Choose Pulumi if you want the larger community (25,695 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose chef if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.