Infrastructure-as-code is the foundation of repeatable cloud operations. Three tools dominate in 2026: Terraform (declarative HCL + ecosystem), Pulumi (real programming languages), and CloudFormation (AWS-native). Here is a side-by-side comparison with a recommendation by team shape.
State management
- Terraform — state file (local or remote), locking via DynamoDB/Consul.
- Pulumi — same model, stored in Pulumi Cloud (or S3/Azure Blob self-hosted).
- CloudFormation — managed by AWS. No state file to manage.
Language
- Terraform — HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language). Declarative.
- Pulumi — TypeScript, Python, Go, Java, .NET, YAML. Real languages.
- CloudFormation — YAML or JSON. Declarative.
Ecosystem
- Terraform — 3000+ providers. Largest community.
- Pulumi — supports every major cloud + Kubernetes + SaaS.
- CloudFormation — AWS only. Deep AWS service coverage.
Recommendation
- Multi-cloud — Terraform.
- AWS only, deep integration — CloudFormation or CDK.
- Software-engineering team that prefers real languages — Pulumi.
Further reading
Authoritative sources
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