head to head · open source
Pulumi vs sops
Pulumi has 25,840 GitHub stars, 1,478 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sops has 23,586 stars, 1,113 forks, 446 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pulumi leads on adoption by 10% (25,840 vs 23,586 stars). Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0; sops is written in Go under MPL-2.0. Pulumi has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, sops 5%. Pulumi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (aws, azure, 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Pulumi | sops | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 24K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 sops if
- You want the sops feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and sops 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 sops
SOPS: Secrets OPerationS ======================== SOPS is an editor of encrypted files that supports YAML, JSON, ENV, INI and BINARY formats and encrypts with AWS KMS, GCP KMS, Azure Key Vault, HuaweiCloud KMS, age, and PGP. ( demo ) .. image:: .. image:: :target: Documentation You can find the SOPS documentation on getsops.io under "Docs" . Security Please report any security issues privately using GitHub's advisory form . License Mozilla Public License Version 2.0 Authors SOPS was initially launched as a project at Mozilla in 2015 and has been graciously donated to the CNCF as a Sandbox project in 2023, now…
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Cloud Infrastructure Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Cloud Infrastructure Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Pulumi or sops more popular?
Pulumi has 25,840 GitHub stars and sops has 23,586. Pulumi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pulumi and sops free?
Both are open source. Pulumi is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sops under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pulumi and sops?
Pulumi is written in Go and sops 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 sops?
Choose Pulumi if you want the larger community (25,840 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sops if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.