head to head · open source
Pulumi vs kics
Pulumi has 25,694 GitHub stars, 1,431 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kics has 2,700 stars, 381 forks, 312 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pulumi leads on adoption by 852% (25,694 vs 2,700 stars). Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0; kics is written in Open Policy Agent under Apache-2.0. Pulumi has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, kics 14%. Pulumi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (golang, iac), 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 | kics | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Open Policy Agent |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 381 |
| 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 kics if
- You want the kics feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Open Policy Agent
- You evaluated both and kics 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 kics
KICS is an open source security scanner for infrastructure as code projects. The project name stands for Keeping Infrastructure as Code Secure, and the repository describes it as a tool for finding security vulnerabilities, compliance issues, and infrastructure misconfigurations early in the development cycle. It is published by Checkmarx under the Apache 2.0 license and is associated with the cloud native, DevSecOps, and application security ecosystems. The repository also lists topics such as infrastructure as code, security, and vulnerability detection.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pulumi or kics more popular?
Pulumi has 25,694 GitHub stars and kics has 2,700. Pulumi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pulumi and kics free?
Both are open source. Pulumi is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kics under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pulumi and kics?
Pulumi is written in Go and kics in Open Policy Agent. 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 kics?
Choose Pulumi if you want the larger community (25,694 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kics if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.