Pulumi 3.263.0 and the 1,800 provider reality

The ecosystem and language divide

Terraform holds 76% of the market according to Hakia’s review of CNCF 2024 data from December 2025. DevOps.com reported Terraform usage at 60% in a January 2026 report, while Pulumi reached 20% in that same study. ComputingForGeeks reported Terraform’s market share at 32.8% in August 2026. Pulumi holds a 12% share in the Hakia review, though it maintains 45% year-over-year growth among developer-focused teams. Terraform’s 49,700 GitHub stars exceed Pulumi’s 25,700 stars as of September 2026. Terraform maintains 4,800 providers, while Pulumi maintains 1,800 providers. While Terraform maintains a 4,800 provider registry, Pulumi reaches 1,800 providers and grows its ecosystem through the pulumi-terraform-bridge, which reached version 6.1.0 on July 20, 2026, according to official release notes. Terraform uses HCL. Pulumi supports Python, TypeScript, JavaScript, Go, C#, Java, F#, and YAML. Pulumi supports eight general-purpose programming languages. These languages allow developers to use loops, conditionals, and classes. This approach simplifies complex environments for engineering teams. Pulumi’s TypeScript support benefits anyone who writes code for a living. Teams using Python can test infrastructure with pytest. You should look at how your team writes code before choosing.

Policy enforcement and automation

Pulumi enables policy enforcement using Python or TypeScript. This allows teams to build modular policy packs. The tap-pulumi-cloud connector uses the Meltano SDK to load infrastructure data into Snowflake, BigQuery, Redshift, or Postgres. This connector handles complex interactions with the Pulumi Cloud API. I find the ability to join Pulumi data with CI/CD provider data for DORA metrics useful. Pulumi’s AWS provider covers new services within 48 hours of their announcement because it uses the AWS CloudFormation spec. Terraform’s AWS provider version 6.62.0 released in August 2026. Will the BSL license eventually force more users toward OpenTofu? Pulumi simplifies data integration by replacing custom API calls with the tap-pulumi-cloud connector. This tool lets teams see the average time to deploy changes or the total updates per user. To use it, you must provide a token and a list of organizations in the configuration. You can configure the environment by adding tap-pulumi-cloud and a loader like target-duckdb to your Meltano project. Users can then switch their tap variant to Pulumi in the meltano.yml file. Pulumi also uses ComponentResource to group resources like compute or storage into a single logical unit.

Pricing and state management

Both tools provide free CLI versions. Managed service costs differ. Pulumi Cloud Essentials costs $40 per month. Pulumi Cloud Pro costs $400 per month. Pulumi’s overage rate for resources hits $0.1825 per month. HCP Terraform Essentials bills at $0.10 per managed resource per month. Terraform uses state files like terraform.tfstate, which teams store in S3 or Azure Blob. Pulumi defaults to Pulumi Cloud for state management.

I find the Pulumi overage rate of $0.1825 per resource per month higher than the $0.10 rate for HCP Terraform Essentials. Terraform users manage state using S3 with DynamoDB locking. Pulumi users use Pulumi Cloud to handle encryption and concurrency. Pick Terraform if your team prefers HCL and a massive provider list. Use Pulumi if your developers prefer Python or TypeScript.