head to head · open source
Pulumi vs itamae
Pulumi has 25,695 GitHub stars, 1,431 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped today. itamae has 1,132 stars, 118 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Pulumi leads on adoption by 2,170% (25,695 vs 1,132 stars). Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0; itamae is written in Ruby under MIT. Pulumi has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, itamae 10%. 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 | itamae | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 118 |
| 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 itamae if
- You want the itamae feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and itamae 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 itamae
Simple and lightweight configuration management tool inspired by Chef. CHANGELOG Concept Chef like DSL (but not compatible with Chef) Simpler and lighter weight than Chef Only recipes Idempotent Installation Getting Started Create a recipe file as recipe.rb : And then execute itamae command to apply a recipe to a local machine. Or you can apply a recipe to a remote machine by itamae ssh . You can also apply a recipe to Vagrant VM by itamae ssh vagrant . You can find further information to use Itamae on Itamae Wiki. Enjoy! Documentation Run tests Requirements: Vagrant Get Involved Join Slack team Presentations / A…
read the full itamae overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pulumi or itamae more popular?
Pulumi has 25,695 GitHub stars and itamae has 1,132. Pulumi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pulumi and itamae free?
Both are open source. Pulumi is licensed under Apache-2.0 and itamae under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pulumi and itamae?
Pulumi is written in Go and itamae 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 itamae?
Choose Pulumi if you want the larger community (25,695 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose itamae if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.