AWS CDK vs Pulumi

Compare AWS CDK vs Pulumi features, pricing, and performance metrics side-by-side to find the optimal platform for your engineering workflow.

Feature Comparison Matrix

Feature AWS CDK Pulumi
Multi-Cloud Support ✗ AWS-focused, limited multi-cloud via custom resources ✓ AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and 100+ providers
Kubernetes-Native ✗ Not K8s-native, uses EKS construct library ✗ Not K8s-native, but strong K8s provider support
State Management ✓ AWS CloudFormation state management ✓ Managed (Pulumi Cloud) or self-managed state
Programming Languages ✓ TypeScript, Python, Java, C#, Go, .NET ✓ TypeScript, Python, Go, C#, Java, YAML
Module/Package Registry ✓ AWS CDK Construct Library, Construct Hub ✓ Pulumi Registry with packages for each language
Policy as Code ✗ AWS Config rules, Service Control Policies (separate) ✓ CrossGuard policy as code with policy packs
Drift Detection ✓ CloudFormation drift detection ✓ Pulumi refresh and drift detection via preview
Preview/Plan ✓ cdk diff and CloudFormation change sets ✓ pulumi preview with detailed diff output
Secret Management ✓ AWS Secrets Manager, Parameter Store integration ✓ Encrypted configuration with Pulumi ESC
Team Collaboration ✓ AWS IAM, CloudFormation StackSets for multi-account ✓ Pulumi Cloud with stacks, RBAC, team collaboration
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About AWS CDK

AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) is an Infrastructure as Code framework by Amazon that lets you define AWS cloud resources using TypeScript, Python, Java, C#, and Go. It provides high-level constructs that encapsulate best practices and defaults, making it easier to build production-ready AWS infrastructure. CDK supports synthesis to CloudFormation templates, allowing use of existing AWS tooling. It includes a large library of construct libraries maintained by AWS and the community.

Explore AWS CDK

About Pulumi

Pulumi is a modern Infrastructure as Code platform that lets you define cloud infrastructure using general-purpose programming languages like TypeScript, Python, Go, and C# instead of a domain-specific language. This enables using loops, functions, and existing package ecosystems within infrastructure code. Pulumi supports all major cloud providers, offers state management, secrets handling, and automation API for embedding infrastructure provisioning in applications.

Explore Pulumi

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