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Tool Comparison
VS
At a Glance
| Attribute | Terraform | AWS CloudFormation |
|---|---|---|
| License / Pricing | Free | Free |
| Type | DevOps | DevOps |
| GitHub Stars | — | — |
| Rating | 4.6/5 | 4.2/5 |
| Key Features | 6 listed | 6 listed |
| Integrations | 7 listed | 5 listed |
| Categories | Infrastructure as Code | Infrastructure as CodeCloud Platform |
Key Features
Terraform
- Declarative HCL configuration language
- State management for tracking real infrastructure
- Plan/apply workflow to preview changes before applying
- Provider ecosystem for AWS, Azure, GCP, and 1000+ services
- Modules for reusable infrastructure components
- Remote backends for team collaboration and state locking
AWS CloudFormation
- Declarative JSON or YAML templates for all AWS resources
- Stack sets for deploying across multiple AWS accounts and regions
- Change sets to preview infrastructure changes before applying
- Drift detection to identify manual changes to managed resources
- Nested stacks for modular template composition
- AWS CDK compiles higher-level code into CloudFormation templates
Real-World Use Cases
Terraform
Provision a production VPC on AWS
Write HCL to define VPC, subnets, route tables, and security groups
Multi-environment infrastructure with workspaces
Define modules for compute, networking, and storage
AWS CloudFormation
Provision a multi-tier web application stack
Write a CloudFormation template defining VPC, EC2 auto scaling group, RDS, and ALB
Multi-account baseline with StackSets
Define baseline resources: IAM roles, CloudTrail, Config rules, and GuardDuty
Integrations
Terraform
ansiblekubernetesaws-cloudformationgithub-actionsgitlab-ci-cdjenkinshashicorp-vault
AWS CloudFormation
aws-codepipelineterraformansibleamazon-eksaws-secrets-manager
🏆 Which should you choose?
Choose Terraform if…
- → you're already in the Infrastructure as Code ecosystem and prefer Terraform's workflow
Choose AWS CloudFormation if…
- → you're already in the Infrastructure as Code ecosystem and prefer AWS CloudFormation's workflow