| Maturity (release date) |
2014 |
2018 |
2018 |
| Popularity in Community (stars GitHub) |
24k (AWS module 5.4k) |
4.8k |
6.7k |
| License |
CLI is free, TF Cloud can be used for extra integrations |
Apache License 2.0 |
Free community edition but severe limitations. Team pro is for up to 25 team members, must go Enterprise |
| Multi cloud |
✔️ |
❌ |
✔️ |
| "Hello World" test |
✔️ |
✔️ |
❌ (fails on simple hello world for Go because it couldn't parse ~/.aws/config ) |
| Flexibility (the amount of freedom during coding) |
❌ (hcl is more demanding than general programming languages) |
✔️ (multiple languages available) |
✔️(multiple languages available) |
| Standardization (readability) |
✔️ (easier to read iac code that you didn't write) |
❌ |
❌ |
| State management (how to handle a case when multiple devs + CI do deployment) |
❌ (can be done via S3 or TF cloud) |
✔️ (via CF templates) |
✔️ (via free pulumi's web service) |
| Lookups to existing resources (when we need to re-use a central VPC for example) |
✔️ |
✔️ |
✔️ (it was unclear whether the looked up resource is going to be deleted by destroy command) |
| High-level abstractions |
❌ |
✔️ (L2 constructs) |
✔️ (awsx package, but it does not seem too full) |
| "Not Hello World" test |
❌ |
✔️ (easy to navigate, has l2) |
✔️ (great, occasional minor issues) |
| Stacks (multiple deployments per project) |
✔️ via prefixes/directories or env variables |
✔️ via passed variables to cdk (must be used for all resources) |
❌ via selecting a stack (must be used for all resources), too implicit |
| Writing |
✔️ (autocomplete works great, but strings when not needed) |
❌ (always unclear when to use l2 or l1, too many modules) |
✔️ (two modules aws vs awsx is confusing but not as much as in CDK) |
| Verbosity |
❌ (too many keystrokes to describe simple things) |
✔️ |
✔️ |
| Error description |
✔️ |
❌ |
❌ |
| Performance |
✔️ |
❌ (felt slower, due to CF template binding) |
✔️ |
| Modules |
❌ modules more difficult to pass dependencies than in CDK/Pulumi |
✔️ |
❌ (via stack references, not a first class citizen) |