Crossplane vs Terraform
Crossplane
crossplane.io
Terraform
developer.hashicorp.comSide by side
| Figure | Crossplane | Terraform |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $0.10/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 10 |
| Spec score · Cloud Management Software | 7.6 (#18) | 8.7 (#5) |
| Spec score · Infrastructure as Code Tools | 7.6 (#16) | 8.7 (#3) |
| Spec score · Cloud Orchestration Software | 7.6 (#15) | 8.6 (#5) |
| Spec score · Platform Engineering Software | 7.7 (#19) | 8.7 (#3) |
| Spec score · Infrastructure Automation | 7.5 (#16) | 8.7 (#6) |
| Spec score · IT Configuration Management Software | 7.5 (#19) | 8.6 (#9) |
| Integrations | The community extension list includes providers for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, GitHub, GitLab, Argo CD, and other services. | HashiCorp lists integrations for AI and MCP servers, audit, CI/CD, VCS, security scanning, policy, cost management, SSO, observability, and multi-cloud platforms. |
| Purpose | Crossplane is a control plane framework for platform engineering that lets teams build control planes to manage cloud native software. | Terraform is an infrastructure-as-code tool for defining, provisioning, and managing cloud and on-premises resources through human-readable configuration files. |
Plans
Terraform
- FreeFree
- StandardPriced on request
- PremiumPriced on request
- HCP Terraform FreeFree
- Terraform Community EditionFree
- HCP Terraform Essentials$0.10 a month
- HCP Terraform Standard$0.47 a month
- HCP Terraform Premium$0.99 a month
- EssentialsPrice not published
- Terraform EnterprisePriced on request
In their own words
Crossplane
Crossplane is a free, open-source CNCF framework for building control planes that manage cloud-native software. Its Composition feature lets teams define custom APIs with pipelines of functions instead of maintaining controllers. Managed resources are Kubernetes custom resources that can represent external services such as AWS RDS instances. Community providers cover AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, GitHub, GitLab and Argo CD, among others. A package manager installs managed resources and composition functions and can distribute configurations across control planes. Crossplane installs into an existing Kubernetes cluster with a Helm chart; the guide requires an actively supported Kubernetes version and Helm v3.2.0 or later. Operations support one-time, scheduled and resource-change-triggered pipelines, but are marked alpha in Crossplane v2. The framework uses Kubernetes RBAC. Its default crossplane-admin ClusterRole has full access to secrets and namespaces and can bind roles to other entities. The project is Apache 2.0 licensed and identifies as vendor neutral.
Terraform
Terraform is an infrastructure-as-code tool for defining, provisioning, and managing cloud and on-premises resources through human-readable configuration files. Its core process is to write a configuration, review an execution plan, then apply approved changes. Providers connect Terraform to services through APIs, and the Terraform Registry lists providers for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, GitHub, and Splunk. Modules package reusable infrastructure configurations that users can find or publish in the Registry. The free Community Edition is a downloadable command-line tool. HCP Terraform adds remote execution, repository connections to GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket that can trigger plans after changes, and an API. It stores state remotely with encryption at rest and offers workspaces, single sign-on, and role-based access controls. HCP Terraform and Terraform Enterprise support Sentinel policies. HashiCorp cautions that policy-as-code is a guardrail, not a security boundary, and trusted providers and modules matter because they can access workspace variables and state. Downloads are available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.