head to head · open source
Pulumi vs dagger
Pulumi has 25,840 GitHub stars, 1,478 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dagger has 16,573 stars, 946 forks, 156 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pulumi leads on adoption by 56% (25,840 vs 16,573 stars). Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0; dagger is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Pulumi has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, dagger 6%. Pulumi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | dagger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 17K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 946 |
| 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 dagger if
- You want the dagger 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 dagger 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 dagger
Dagger: a better way to ship Dagger is a platform for automating software delivery. It can build, test and ship any codebase, reliably and at scale. Dagger runs locally, in your CI server, or directly in the cloud. Why Dagger? Dagger makes your software delivery programmable , local first , repeatable and observable . Programmable . Shell scripts and proprietary YAML are no longer acceptable for automating software delivery. Dagger provides: a complete execution engine and system API; SDKs for 8 languages; an interactive REPL; a rich ecosystem of reusable modules; and more. Local first . Once you automate a task…
read the full dagger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pulumi or dagger more popular?
Pulumi has 25,840 GitHub stars and dagger has 16,573. Pulumi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pulumi and dagger free?
Both are open source. Pulumi is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dagger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pulumi and dagger?
Pulumi is written in Go and dagger 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 dagger?
Choose Pulumi if you want the larger community (25,840 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dagger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.