head to head · open source
Pulumi vs terratest
Pulumi has 25,695 GitHub stars, 1,431 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped today. terratest has 7,943 stars, 1,371 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pulumi leads on adoption by 223% (25,695 vs 7,943 stars). Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0; terratest is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Pulumi has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, terratest 17%. Pulumi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (aws, golang), 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 | terratest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 7.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 terratest if
- You want the terratest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and terratest 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 terratest
Terratest is an Apache 2.0 Go library maintained by Gruntwork that provides helper functions and patterns for writing automated tests against infrastructure code, and it is aimed at engineers who validate Terraform modules, Packer templates, Docker images, Kubernetes resources and AWS, Azure or GCP infrastructure inside a Go test suite.
read the full terratest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pulumi or terratest more popular?
Pulumi has 25,695 GitHub stars and terratest has 7,943. Pulumi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pulumi and terratest free?
Both are open source. Pulumi is licensed under Apache-2.0 and terratest under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pulumi and terratest?
Pulumi is written in Go and terratest 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 terratest?
Choose Pulumi if you want the larger community (25,695 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose terratest if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.