Terraform vs Pulumi: Complete Comparison Guide
Compare Terraform and Pulumi on language, state management, provider ecosystem, and learning curve. Discover which Infrastructure-as-Code tool is the best fit for your team.
Terraform
HashiCorp's open-source Infrastructure-as-Code tool that uses the declarative HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language). Terraform manages cloud infrastructure via a state file and boasts the largest provider ecosystem with thousands of official and community providers for AWS, Azure, GCP, and hundreds of other services.
Pulumi
A modern Infrastructure-as-Code tool that lets you define infrastructure using general-purpose programming languages such as TypeScript, Python, Go, and C#. Pulumi eliminates the need for a separate DSL and provides full access to loops, conditionals, and abstractions from your preferred language.
Comparison table
| Feature | Terraform | Pulumi |
|---|---|---|
| Configuration language | HCL (custom declarative DSL) — simple but limited | TypeScript, Python, Go, C#, Java — full programming languages |
| State management | Terraform Cloud, S3, local state file — extensive ecosystem | Pulumi Cloud (free tier), S3, local state — managed service |
| Provider ecosystem | 3,000+ providers — by far the largest ecosystem in IaC | Native providers + Terraform bridge — compatible with Terraform providers |
| Learning curve | Requires learning HCL — easy for beginners, limited at complexity | No new language needed — steeper start but more powerful |
| Testing | Terraform test framework (experimental), Terratest | Native unit tests in your programming language with standard frameworks |
| Community & adoption | Market leader with the largest community and documentation | Fast-growing, popular with teams that prefer programming languages |
Verdict
Terraform and Pulumi both deliver excellent Infrastructure-as-Code but with fundamentally different philosophies. Terraform's HCL is deliberately simple and declarative, lowering the barrier to entry but making complex logic harder. Pulumi lets you write infrastructure in the same language as your application, which is powerful but requires discipline to keep things readable. Terraform's ecosystem is unmatched in breadth, while Pulumi increasingly supports providers via its Terraform bridge. The choice depends on your team composition: platform engineers often choose Terraform, while full-stack developers prefer Pulumi.
Our recommendation
At MG Software, we use Terraform for production infrastructure due to its proven ecosystem and broad community support. For internal tooling and projects where TypeScript is the primary language, we experiment with Pulumi to bring infrastructure and application code closer together. We advise clients to choose Terraform as their default IaC tool unless the team primarily consists of full-stack developers who prefer not to learn a new language — in that case, Pulumi is an excellent alternative.
Frequently asked questions
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