head to head · open source
Pulumi vs crossplane
Pulumi has 25,840 GitHub stars, 1,478 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crossplane has 12,222 stars, 1,289 forks, 194 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pulumi leads on adoption by 111% (25,840 vs 12,222 stars). Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0; crossplane is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Pulumi has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, crossplane 11%. Pulumi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cloud-computing, containers), 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 | crossplane | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 crossplane if
- You want the crossplane 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 crossplane fits your workflow better
About Pulumi
Infrastructure as Code for Humans and Agents Pulumi Infrastructure as Code is the easiest way to build and deploy infrastructure, of any architecture and on any cloud, using programming languages that you already know and love. Code and ship infrastructure faster with your favorite languages and tools, and embed IaC anywhere with Automation API. Simply write code in your favorite language and Pulumi automatically provisions and manages your resources on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, and 300+ providers using an infrastructure as code approach. Skip the YAML, and use standard language features…
read the full Pulumi overview →
About crossplane
Crossplane is a framework for building cloud native control planes without needing to write code. It has a highly extensible backend that enables you to build a control plane that can orchestrate applications and infrastructure no matter where they run, and a highly configurable frontend that puts you in control of the schema of the declarative API it offers. Crossplane is a [Cloud Native Computing Foundation][cncf] project. Get Started Crossplane's [Get Started Docs] covers install and resource quickstarts. Releases Currently maintained releases, as well as the next few upcoming releases are listed below. For…
read the full crossplane overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pulumi or crossplane more popular?
Pulumi has 25,840 GitHub stars and crossplane has 12,222. Pulumi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pulumi and crossplane free?
Both are open source. Pulumi is licensed under Apache-2.0 and crossplane under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pulumi and crossplane?
Pulumi is written in Go and crossplane 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, Pulumi or crossplane?
Choose Pulumi if you want the larger community (25,840 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose crossplane if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.