Terragrunt vs. Terraform – Comparison & When to Use

In this article, we delve into two DevOps tools - Terraform and Terragrunt. Terraform is an open-source IaC tool that automates infrastructure provisioning, configuration, and deployment across multiple cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, Azure, etc., and other products such as Kubernetes, Datadog, VMware, etc. On the other hand, Terragrunt is a wrapper tool specifically designed to assist with efficient maintenance and deployment of infrastructure by managing multiple Terraform modules and deployments. Terraform's key benefits include its cloud-agnostic nature, ability to manage complex infrastructures, and support for third-party modules and plugins. Terragrunt simplifies the management of Terraform configurations across multiple modules, enabling code reuse and efficient maintenance. It also manages remote states securely across environments. Terragrunt is useful when working with projects involving multiple environments to avoid redundancy in code. It uses .hcl files for configuration and offers a simple way to handle dependencies between modules. Terragrunt can deploy resources across multiple environments at once, reducing the need for repetitive commands. Comparing Terraform and Terragrunt, both tools use HCL for configuration and support modularization. However, they differ in purpose, scope, configuration management, dependency management, remote state management, and project structure. While Terraform workspaces can be used to manage multiple environments, it's not recommended for production-grade deployments. Terragrunt is a better choice for large-scale, complex infrastructure deployments due to its efficiency in managing environment configurations and source code visibility.