Crossplane vs Terraform – IaC Tools Comparison

Crossplane and Terraform are both popular Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools used for infrastructure provisioning and management. While they share the same objective, their features and design principles differ. Crossplane is an open-source tool that extends Kubernetes to manage cloud infrastructure via its API and kubectl command. It offers seamless integration with Kubernetes, allowing infrastructure deployments to be composed in the same way as application deployments. Terraform, on the other hand, is a standalone IaC tool developed by HashiCorp that uses a declarative configuration language called HCL. Terraform has a large ecosystem supporting over 3k providers and offers fine-grained control over infrastructure creation and management. It also has strong community support and extensive resources and documentation. Crossplane, being relatively newer, has a smaller but growing community and is still at the maturity level of an incubating project. The choice between Terraform and Crossplane depends on various factors such as scope, complexity, integration, scalability, maturity, community support, cost, and licensing model. For teams heavily invested in Kubernetes or those looking for a unified approach to manage both their infrastructure and applications, Crossplane could be the better choice. However, for those seeking a mature tool with strong community support and extensive resources, Terraform is recommended. In addition to these tools, using an IaC orchestrator like Spacelift can greatly enhance your workflow by effectively managing Terraform state, supporting policy as code, programmatic configuration, context sharing, drift detection, resource visualization, and more.