head to head · open source
Pulumi vs pyinfra
Pulumi has 25,694 GitHub stars, 1,431 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pyinfra has 6,000 stars, 547 forks, 160 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Pulumi leads on adoption by 328% (25,694 vs 6,000 stars). Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0; pyinfra is written in Python under MIT. Pulumi has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, pyinfra 9%. 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 | pyinfra | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 547 |
| 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 pyinfra if
- You want the pyinfra feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and pyinfra 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 pyinfra
pyinfra is a Python based infrastructure automation tool that turns Python code into shell commands and runs those commands on remote servers. It lives in the configuration management and cloud infrastructure management space, and it targets SSH servers, the local machine, and Docker containers through a connector system. The project is written in Python, licensed under MIT, and has been developed for roughly twelve years. Its own description frames it as "ansible but Python instead of YAML."
read the full pyinfra overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pulumi or pyinfra more popular?
Pulumi has 25,694 GitHub stars and pyinfra has 6,000. Pulumi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pulumi and pyinfra free?
Both are open source. Pulumi is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pyinfra under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pulumi and pyinfra?
Pulumi is written in Go and pyinfra in Python. 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 pyinfra?
Choose Pulumi if you want the larger community (25,694 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pyinfra if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.