OpenTofu vs Terraform : Key Differences and Comparison

In the IaC world, Terraform and OpenTofu are popular projects that allow engineers to define, provision, and manage infrastructure lifecycles. Both tools offer modularity, declarative configuration, state management, CI/CD integrations, and ecosystem support. However, key differences include licensing (OpenTofu is open-source under MPL 2.0 while Terraform is source-available under BSL), community-driven development (OpenTofu has a ranking system for feature implementation), state encryption (Offered by OpenTofu but not Terraform), and early variable evaluation (Available in OpenTofu 1.8). Spacelift supports both tools, offering features like policy enforcement, stack dependencies, cloud integrations, contexts, drift detection, and enhanced observability. As time passes, the two tools will likely diverge further.