Pulumi
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 10 IaC tools by recommenders
Recommended for letting engineers write cloud infrastructure in ordinary programming languages instead of HCL or YAML. Critics say that freedom allows complexity that is harder to keep simple.
Recommended for letting engineers write cloud infrastructure in ordinary programming languages instead of HCL or YAML. Critics say that freedom allows complexity that is harder to keep simple.
52 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 44
- criticize it
- 8
- approval share
- 85%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 44 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 5.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 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
Real languages instead of HCL
“you can use a variety of common programming languages to declare your desired state, rather than HCL”
Comment from 2 Nov 2025 on Hacker News “No engineer liked HCL, our demographic was engineers who were familiar with programming languages”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “The future of Terraform CDK” “honestly find it the most approachable for other engineers familiar with normal programming languages”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “The future of Terraform CDK” - Comment from 23 May 2026 in “YAML? That's Norway Problem”
- Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “GitHub Actions has a package manager, and it might be the worst”
- Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “OpenGitOps”
- Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Holos – QEMU/KVM with a compose-style YAML, GPUs and health checks”
- Comment from 20 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Holos – QEMU/KVM with a compose-style YAML, GPUs and health checks”
Painless migrations and good experiences
“The migration to Pulumi was refreshingly painless.”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “PyInfra 3.8.0 Is Out” “I migrated our company off Terraform to Pulumi”
Comment from 8 Dec 2025 in “IBM to acquire Confluent” “We used it at my last startup and I loved it”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “Almost Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret after 4 years” - Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “The future of Terraform CDK”
- Comment from 21 Feb 2026 in “Almost Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret after 4 years”
More compact, readable code
“I’ve had a lot of benefit from using pulumi, simply because the code can be more compact than the terraform hcl was.”
Comment from 17 Nov 2025 in “How when AWS was down, we were not” “99% of the text just GOES AWAY and everything is way more legible.”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “Helm 4.0” “Real Code (Pulumi vs. TF, minimal YAML wrangling etc)”
Comment from 30 Oct 2026 in “AI isn't replacing SREs, it's deskilling them” Faster deployments, better developer experience
“The only advantage I see here over CDK is using Pulumi as the underlying resource engine, which I admit performs better on deployment speed.”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 in “Stelvio: Ship Python to AWS” “Devexp is leaps and bounds better with Pulumi than CDK though.”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Helm 4.0”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Flexibility allows 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” “It is a rabbit hole for devs and it allows complexity where in Yaml you are forced to KISS.”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “GitHub Actions is the weakest link” “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” Weak Terraform tooling compatibility
“the static analysis tools available for HCL don't work with Pulumi”
Comment from 20 Feb 2026 in “Almost Every infrastructure decision I endorse or regret after 4 years” “the compatibility with Terraform modules was not great”
Comment from 10 Dec 2025 in “The future of Terraform CDK”
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 62 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Real Code (Pulumi vs. TF, minimal YAML wrangling etc)”
“scripting infrastructure via a programming language was a better experience”
“anyone who does not need terraform cross compatibility will write things against CDK or Pulumi”
“having a known fully-fledged language available makes life a bit easier”
“you realize using PyInfra and Pulumi, you can do all of that in just Python”
“The migration to Pulumi was refreshingly painless.”
“It is a rabbit hole for devs and it allows complexity where in Yaml you are forced to KISS.”
“Pulumi and Pyinfra already provide user-friendly primitives and idempotent(ish) APIs that work much better than YAML”
“What's nice about Pulumi is that I can use the Incus Terraform provider from a number of languages saner than HCL.”
“I've recently become a fan of more dynamic IaC like the AWS CDK or Pulumi”
“I saved so much time thanks to pulumi!”
“We used it at my last startup and I loved it”
“the static analysis tools available for HCL don't work with Pulumi”
“Yes, you can and definitely should use Pulumi or other cloud infra for production use cases.”
“Puluni does have a good track record of keeping up with AWS”
“The only advantage I see here over CDK is using Pulumi as the underlying resource engine, which I admit performs better on deployment speed.”
“you can always access the low-level Pulumi component and override whatever you need”
“Pulumi, where I could skip the DSLs entirely”
“GitLab CI + Pulumi/Kusion is the most stable solution.”
“Infrastructure and maintenance has been pleasant”
“honestly find it the most approachable for other engineers familiar with normal programming languages”
“No engineer liked HCL, our demographic was engineers who were familiar with programming languages”
“you can use Pulumi in a pure functional style with F# or Scala”
“Pulumi is pretty cool but I'm a little worried by how high on the stack it is”
“I've had nothing but good experiences, but I don't run it and the team that does is extremely competent”
“hoping it's not to rip the bandaid and migrate everything to terraform / pulumi”
“I have a lot of good things to say about both it and Terraform.”
“I don't particularly like Pulumi but use it anyways because for my use cases being able to write actual code is really impactful”
“the compatibility with Terraform modules was not great”
“I enjoy it, but I also think my platform team has set it up in the best possible way.”
“writing infra in a real language (TypeScript) is MILES better than”
“I migrated our company off Terraform to Pulumi”
“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.”
“Pulumi or CDK are for sure more powerful (and great tools)”
“I’ve had a lot of benefit from using pulumi, simply because the code can be more compact than the terraform hcl was.”
“Devexp is leaps and bounds better with Pulumi than CDK though.”
“99% of the text just GOES AWAY and everything is way more legible.”
“you can use a variety of common programming languages to declare your desired state, rather than HCL”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.