Pulumi vs. Terraform : Key Differences and Comparison

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a practice that applies software development techniques to the management of infrastructure, such as networks, virtual machines, and load balancers. This approach offers several benefits, including versioning using repositories like GitHub, streamlining provisioning and maintenance through repeatable processes, code reviews and audits for error prevention, and scalability with reduced human error. Two popular IaC tools are Terraform and Pulumi. Terraform is an open-source tool created by Hashicorp that uses its own domain-specific language called Hashicorp Configuration Language (HCL). It allows automating infrastructure stacks from multiple cloud service providers simultaneously. Terraform uses "plans" to validate the configuration and display exactly what elements are going to change before the changes are applied. Pulumi is an IaC tool that uses a declarative format to deploy infrastructure. Like Terraform, it is open source on GitHub and is free to use. It offers the ability to use any major development language in the creation of infrastructure template files. Pulumi supports all of the major cloud providers. Both tools have their unique features and capabilities. For example, Terraform uses HCL for configuration files, while Pulumi supports multiple programming languages like TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Go, and C#. Additionally, Terraform stores state locally by default, whereas Pulumi stores its state in the Pulumi Cloud. The choice between Terraform and Pulumi depends on factors such as language preference, IDE integration, open-source licenses, testability support, cloud provider support, secret management, infrastructure reuse capabilities, and more. Ultimately, both tools are capable of meeting IaC requirements effectively.