head to head · open source
Pulumi vs terragrunt
Pulumi has 25,840 GitHub stars, 1,478 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. terragrunt has 9,910 stars, 1,248 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pulumi leads on adoption by 161% (25,840 vs 9,910 stars). Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0; terragrunt is written in Go under MIT. Pulumi has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, terragrunt 13%. Pulumi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (aws), 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 | terragrunt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 9.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 terragrunt if
- You want the terragrunt feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and terragrunt 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 terragrunt
Terragrunt 🎉 Terragrunt v1.0 is here! Read the announcement to learn more. Terragrunt is a flexible orchestration tool that allows Infrastructure as Code written in OpenTofu/Terraform to scale. Please see the following for more info, including install instructions and complete documentation: Terragrunt Website Getting started with Terragrunt Terragrunt Documentation Terragrunt Scale Contributing to Terragrunt Commercial Support Join the Discord! Join our community for discussions, support, and contributions: License This code is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt.
read the full terragrunt overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pulumi or terragrunt more popular?
Pulumi has 25,840 GitHub stars and terragrunt has 9,910. Pulumi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pulumi and terragrunt free?
Both are open source. Pulumi is licensed under Apache-2.0 and terragrunt under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pulumi and terragrunt?
Pulumi is written in Go and terragrunt 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 terragrunt?
Choose Pulumi if you want the larger community (25,840 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose terragrunt if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.