Terraform vs Pulumi comes down to who owns your infrastructure code, not how many engineers you have. If ops or platform engineers own it, stay on Terraform or OpenTofu and hire from what we judge to be the larger pool. If application developers own it and you want one language across app and infra, pick Pulumi. The licence and the bill are small questions next to that one.
Terraform or Pulumi: which should a product team pick?
| Question | Terraform / OpenTofu | Pulumi |
|---|---|---|
| Who it suits | Ops or platform engineers | Application developers |
| Language | HCL, a domain-specific language | Python, TypeScript, Go, .NET, Java (also YAML, HCL) |
| Licence | Terraform BSL 1.1; OpenTofu MPL-2.0 | CLI and SDKs Apache 2.0 |
| Default state | Local files, or a remote backend such as S3 or HCP Terraform | Pulumi Cloud, or S3, Azure Blob, GCS |
| Hiring pool | Larger | Smaller |
Pulumi's comparison page is the source for the language, licence and state rows. The hiring-pool row is our judgment, since Stack Overflow's 2025 survey lists only Terraform.
Does Terraform's BSL licence affect you?
Almost certainly not. HashiCorp's BSL page allows production use, including internal use inside your company. What it bars is offering a competing hosted or embedded product built on Terraform. Each version converts to MPL 2.0 four years after it's published.
If your product resells infrastructure automation, check the BSL with a lawyer. If your legal team simply wants a fully open licence, OpenTofu exists for that: its FAQ says it was created in response to HashiCorp's switch to the BUSL. Pulumi's CLI and SDKs are Apache 2.0, so Pulumi raises no licence question either. The longer treatment is in HCP Terraform pricing and the BSL in detail.
What will each cost at your size?
Take a product company on AWS with 2,000 managed resources. HashiCorp's pricing page charges HCP Terraform per resource per month, starting at $0.10 on Essentials, $0.47 on Standard and $0.99 on Premium. At list prices that's $200, $940 or $1,980 a month, before any free-tier deduction.
Pulumi's pricing page sells Pro at $400 a month, including 400 credits (a credit is $1) and up to 2,000 managed resources. It also lists a per-resource price on Pro from $0.365 a month, and it doesn't say how that combines with the plan fee. Get a written quote from Pulumi before you commit.
So at 2,000 resources the bill runs from a few hundred to about two thousand dollars a month depending on tier. That's small against one engineer's time. Both tools can also keep state in your own S3 bucket instead of their paid clouds, according to Pulumi's comparison page.
What do you have to change to move?
Less than the syntax suggests. Pulumi's comparison page lists four routes from Terraform:
pulumi convert --from terraformtranslates existing HCL into one of Pulumi's languages.pulumi importbrings already-deployed resources under Pulumi management.- Pulumi can run HCL as-is, so one team moves while everyone else stays put.
- A bridge lets Pulumi use Terraform providers.
Routes 3 and 4 make a low-risk first step. Run pulumi convert on one real module, time it, and have the engineer who owns it review the output. That afternoon tells you more than any vendor estimate.
Going to OpenTofu is smaller still. Its FAQ says it works with state up to Terraform 1.5.x. If your state is newer, follow OpenTofu's migration guide and test on a copy of the state first. Either way, the pipeline that runs the apply needs the new CLI and credentials.
Which engineers do you hire for each?
Stack Overflow's 2025 developer survey has Terraform at 17.8% of all respondents, so Terraform skills aren't hard to find. We think the Pulumi pool is smaller but different: a Pulumi role can draw on any strong TypeScript, Python or Go engineer who's comfortable with cloud, while a Terraform role wants someone who already thinks in HCL, modules and state.
To measure it in your market, post one job description for each and count qualified applicants over two weeks. For other stacks, see Hire developers by tech stack.
What's the catch with each?
Stay on Terraform
The catch is that only people fluent in HCL can change production.
Move to OpenTofu
Pick it if procurement or legal won't sign off on the BSL. You get an open licence and a public RFC process for changes. The catch is that you supply the runner or platform around it.
Move to Pulumi
Developers get loops, tests and types in the language they already use. The catch is review discipline: in our view, ordinary code allows cleverness that HCL's limits prevent. Start with route 3 above to find out whether your developers actually want the ownership.
What this means for your IaC decision
Settle who owns infrastructure code before you open a pricing page. If a platform team owns it, Terraform or OpenTofu is the standard and the hire is someone fluent in HCL and state. If product developers will own it, Pulumi is the standard and the hire is a strong general-purpose engineer with cloud experience. Above or below any headcount, that rule holds.
Then check the licence: if you don't resell infrastructure tooling, the BSL isn't your problem. Last, run the bill at your resource count.
The next step is knowing what the role costs and where to find the person: see hiring cloud engineers.
Hiring a DevOps engineer for the migration
Say you've picked OpenTofu or Pulumi and nobody on the team has run it in production. The first conversion is where that shows. HighCircl matches you with senior DevOps engineers in 72 hours, at €45-105/hr ($50-115/hr), so the first conversion doesn't have to wait for a permanent hire. A contract engineer can convert the first stack, set the review rules and hand it back to your team.
FAQ
Is Pulumi the same as Terraform?
No. Both describe cloud infrastructure as code and track state, but Terraform uses HCL while Pulumi uses general-purpose languages such as TypeScript, Python and Go.
Is Terraform still free after the BSL?
The CLI is free to use in production inside your company. The BSL bars competing hosted or embedded offerings. HCP Terraform, the paid service, charges per resource.
Is OpenTofu a drop-in replacement for Terraform?
Mostly, with one limit. OpenTofu's FAQ says it works with state up to Terraform 1.5.x. If yours is newer, follow OpenTofu's migration guide and test on a copy of the state first.
Who are Pulumi's main competitors?
Terraform and OpenTofu are the direct ones. Crossplane, CDK and Ansible solve related problems with a different operating model.
Why are people moving away from Terraform?
Two reasons come up often: HashiCorp's move to the BSL licence, and HCL being a domain-specific language rather than general-purpose code. Neither forces a move for internal use, so decide on ownership and hiring first.