AWS CDK
Ranked 3 of 10 IaC tools by recommenders
Recommended for defining AWS infrastructure in real programming languages with sensible defaults, though critics note its CloudFormation foundation and complexity.
Recommended for defining AWS infrastructure in real programming languages with sensible defaults, though critics note its CloudFormation foundation and complexity.
44 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 29
- criticize it
- 15
- approval share
- 66%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 5 years
Median of the 4 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 29 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.9 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Infrastructure as real code
“generating infrastructure definitions from a regular, testable language using all the same tools”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “The future of Terraform CDK” “Being able to use programming languages for infra makes composition better.”
Comment from 30 Mar 2026 in “Infrastructure Has an Entropy Problem” “Infrastructure as real code.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “GitHub Actions Is Slowly Killing Your Engineering Team” Easy high-level AWS stacks
“AWS already provides a sleuth of high level constructs with sensible defaults.”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Stelvio: Ship Python to AWS” “Higher level CDK constructs do the same thing.”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Stelvio: Ship Python to AWS” “It makes creating an AWS stack really easy”
Comment from 6 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Terminal UI for AWS” Preferred over Terraform for AWS
“I've been very happy using cdk for interacting with aws. Much better than terraform and the like.”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “Almost Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret after 4 years” “Cdk has far exceeded Ansible and Terraform in my experience.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “GitHub Actions Is Slowly Killing Your Engineering Team” “CDK is far better than Terraform.”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “Almost Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret after 4 years” Full AWS integration, no third party
“If you fully embrace all the stuff they give you then it's straightforward to declare everything and it all works together.”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “What job interviews taught me about Kubernetes” “it means my major dependency for IaC is my cloud vendor and not a third party”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “The future of Terraform CDK” “I'd rather just use the AWS CDK and CloudFormation.”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Stelvio: Ship Python to AWS”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Built on CloudFormation, opaque and slow
“slow deployment: CDK is layer on top of cloud formation”
Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Stelvio: Ship Python to AWS” “CDK on AWS itself uses CFN, which is a dog's breakfast and has no visibility on what's happening under the covers.”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Terminal UI for AWS” “The worst part about CDK is, by far , that it's still backed by Cloudformation.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “GitHub Actions Is Slowly Killing Your Engineering Team” Complex to set up and understand
“it's simply not enough, and the resulting interfaces are still way too brittle and complex”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “Helm 4.0” “CDK apps or docker compose files that are way more difficult to understand”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Uncloud - Tool for deploying containerised apps across servers without k8s” “it did take lot of time to to setup everything with CDK, certainly days”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Stelvio: Ship Python to AWS” - Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “How when AWS was down, we were not”
Code can add risk and imperative complexity
“the best case is it's much better, safer, readable etc. However, the worst case is also worse.”
Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “How when AWS was down, we were not” “there is no reason to shoot yourself in the foot with a fully fledged programming language”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “I took all my projects off the cloud, saving thousands of dollars” “With CDK and pulumi, it's very easy to end up in a place where you lose that.”
Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “How when AWS was down, we were not” - Comment from 21 May 2026 in “I returned to AWS, and was reminded why I left”
Other IaC tools people recommend
The four most recommended other IaC tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 10 IaC tools, rankedWhat people said
40 of the 54 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“If you fully embrace all the stuff they give you then it's straightforward to declare everything and it all works together.”
“anyone who does not need terraform cross compatibility will write things against CDK or Pulumi”
“CDK (atm) as limitations and it's also got a more imperative model.”
“use AWS CDK to do infra. Done.”
“Being able to use programming languages for infra makes composition better.”
“I've recently become a fan of more dynamic IaC like the AWS CDK or Pulumi”
“it hasn't the last 6 years, it only gets faster”
“Maybe it's the CDK, but we've only been on that a couple years”
“CDK is better when it works.”
“CDK is far better than Terraform.”
“I've been very happy using cdk for interacting with aws. Much better than terraform and the like.”
“Dependency deadlocks are the big one - you try to share resource attributes (eg ARN) from one stack to another.”
“Cdk has far exceeded Ansible and Terraform in my experience.”
“The worst part about CDK is, by far , that it's still backed by Cloudformation.”
“Infrastructure as real code.”
“it did take lot of time to to setup everything with CDK, certainly days”
“AWS already provides a sleuth of high level constructs with sensible defaults.”
“slow deployment: CDK is layer on top of cloud formation”
“Higher level CDK constructs do the same thing.”
“I'd rather just use the AWS CDK and CloudFormation.”
“There is plenty of documentation and my experience is I can one shot my entire IAC”
“already support Python and work great”
“I've only ever used it with ts and thought the experience was pretty good”
“It makes creating an AWS stack really easy”
“CDK on AWS itself uses CFN, which is a dog's breakfast and has no visibility on what's happening under the covers.”
“And by osmosis learned a lot about cloud native application architecture.”
“aws-cdk intermixes "it's declarative" (you're setting up your desired state) but also "it's code"”
“generating infrastructure definitions from a regular, testable language using all the same tools”
“we're using cdk since 100% of our stuff is in aws but will soon need to hook up some external resources like cloudflare”
“it means my major dependency for IaC is my cloud vendor and not a third party”
“For pure AWS I guess CDK directly is okay, but locks you in.”
“CDK apps or docker compose files that are way more difficult to understand”
“we're able to declare our intent at a higher level of abstraction”
“the best case is it's much better, safer, readable etc. However, the worst case is also worse.”
“Pulumi and CDK are an opportunity to simplify your infra by capturing what you’re working with”
“With CDK and pulumi, it's very easy to end up in a place where you lose that.”
“We don't use the CDK because it introduces complexity into the system.”
“Pulumi or CDK are for sure more powerful (and great tools)”
“it's simply not enough, and the resulting interfaces are still way too brittle and complex”
“there is no reason to shoot yourself in the foot with a fully fledged programming language”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.