head to head · open source
Pulumi vs kcl
Pulumi has 25,694 GitHub stars, 1,431 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kcl has 2,415 stars, 170 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Pulumi leads on adoption by 964% (25,694 vs 2,415 stars). Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0; kcl is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Pulumi has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, kcl 7%. 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 | kcl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 170 |
| 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 kcl if
- You want the kcl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and kcl 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 kcl
KCL is an open source, constraint based record and functional language, hosted as a CNCF Sandbox project and licensed under Apache 2.0, for platform engineers, DevOps teams, and cloud native practitioners who need to write, validate, and manage complex configuration without hand maintaining raw YAML or JSON.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pulumi or kcl more popular?
Pulumi has 25,694 GitHub stars and kcl has 2,415. Pulumi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pulumi and kcl free?
Both are open source. Pulumi is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kcl under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pulumi and kcl?
Pulumi is written in Go and kcl in Rust. 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 kcl?
Choose Pulumi if you want the larger community (25,694 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kcl if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.