head to head · open source
Pulumi vs infracost
Pulumi has 25,840 GitHub stars, 1,478 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. infracost has 12,605 stars, 701 forks, 22 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pulumi leads on adoption by 105% (25,840 vs 12,605 stars). Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0; infracost is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Pulumi has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, infracost 6%. Pulumi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (aws, azure, cloud, gcp), 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 | infracost | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 701 |
| 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 infracost if
- You want the infracost 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 infracost 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 infracost
Cloud cost intelligence for engineers, AI coding agents, and CI/CD. Infracost shows cloud cost estimates and FinOps best practices for Terraform, Terragrunt, CloudFormation, and AWS CDK — before changes are deployed . See costs in your terminal, your editor, your AI coding agent, or right in pull requests. The Infracost Dev toolkit Infracost meets engineers wherever they work with infrastructure code — the terminal, their editor, their AI coding agent, and their CI pipeline. Every entry point talks to the same engine, the same pricing data, and the same FinOps policies, so a check you set up once shows up…
read the full infracost overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pulumi or infracost more popular?
Pulumi has 25,840 GitHub stars and infracost has 12,605. Pulumi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pulumi and infracost free?
Both are open source. Pulumi is licensed under Apache-2.0 and infracost under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pulumi and infracost?
Pulumi is written in Go and infracost 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 infracost?
Choose Pulumi if you want the larger community (25,840 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose infracost if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.