What is Terraform?
Terraform is an infrastructure-as-code tool: infrastructure across supported providers is described in HCL configuration, and Terraform computes a plan of changes before applying them, tracking state to manage resources over time. Since version 1.6 (August 2023), Terraform is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1, which the Open Source Initiative does not recognize as open source, though free use for most internal purposes is still permitted. HashiCorp and Terraform's license are now owned by IBM, which completed its acquisition of HashiCorp in February 2025. OpenTofu is a separately governed, fully open-source (MPL-2.0) fork for teams that require an OSI-approved license.
Read the full overview
Sources checked 27 September 2026: official website, documentation.
TerraformInfrastructure as CodeInfrastructure-as-code tool for provisioning cloud resources declaratively
Key capabilities
- Declarative config: Infrastructure defined in HCL across many providers.
- Plan/apply workflow: Preview changes before they are applied.
- State management: Tracked state used to reconcile desired vs. actual infrastructure.
Given the 2023 license change, confirm whether your organization's use case (including any internal platform-as-a-service offering) stays within the Business Source License's Additional Use Grant, or evaluate OpenTofu as an alternative.
“Infrastructure-as-code tool for provisioning cloud resources declaratively”
Technical details
- Access
- Self-hosted
- Source model
- Commercial
- Founded
- 2014
- Pricing model
- Freemium
- API
- Available
- Website
- www.terraform.io ↗
- GitHub
- Source repository ↗
What to verify
Start from the users, systems and operating responsibilities the tool needs to support.
- Confirm current features, licensing and support terms.
- Validate deployment, data location and access control.
- Test integrations, exports and recovery workflows.
Reviews of Terraform
Infrastructure as Code done right4/5 starsTerraform manages our entire multi-cloud infrastructure. The declarative approach and state management make infrastructure changes predictable and reviewable. The HCL language is easy to learn. Main complaint: state file management can be tricky in large teams.
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