Spacelift vs Terraform

Spacelift is an infrastructure-as-code orchestration platform that automates plans, applies, policy checks, and drift detection, while recording actions for governance and security. It integrates with Terraform, OpenTofu, Pulumi, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, Ansible, AWS CDK, Serverless, and Terragrunt. Source control connections include Bitbucket, GitHub, GitLab, and Azure DevOps; cloud and notification integrations include AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Slack, and Microsoft Teams. Governance features include OPA-based policies for plans, approvals, notifications, and security controls, along with Spaces, Contexts, and role-based access control. Deployment options include managed SaaS, self-hosting on a cloud provider, on-premises and air-gapped deployment, and FedRAMP-authorized SaaS. The Free plan costs nothing and includes 2 users and 1 public worker. Starter + costs $20,000 a year as an annual subscription. The pricing FAQ says Starter+, Business, and Enterprise subscriptions are annual and that features or workers cannot be removed from annual subscriptions. Spacelift says customer data is encrypted at rest and in transit and that it holds SOC 2 Type II certification.

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.