OpenTofu

Overview

OpenTofu is the community fork of Terraform, created in September 2023 after HashiCorp moved Terraform to the Business Source Licence. It is a drop-in replacement: the same configuration language, the same workflow, and compatibility with state files up to those written by Terraform 1.5.

The reason it exists is licensing. OpenTofu is MPL 2.0, properly open source, and stewarded by the Linux Foundation rather than a company, which is the point for organisations that need a licence they can rely on.

It has not stood still since forking. Its most notable addition is state and plan encryption at rest, with key providers for AWS KMS, GCP KMS, Azure Key Vault, OpenBao and PBKDF2, which Terraform does not offer natively. Version 1.12 adds dynamic prevent-destroy and a destroy lifecycle argument.

It runs its own registry, separate from Terraform's, with around 4,700 providers and 24,000 modules, including the Databricks and Snowflake providers data teams need.

What it does not have is a hosted service. The project ships the CLI only: no managed state backend, no pull-request checks, no policy engine of its own. Those come from third-party vendors, several of whom backed the fork.

Version 1.6 was the first stable release in January 2024, and the current stable line is 1.12, released in August 2026.

Key features and capabilities

The same headings are used for every infrastructure as code entry, so two tools can be read side by side.

How infrastructure is described

• The same configuration language and module system as Terraform, as a drop-in replacement
• Around 24,000 modules in its own registry
• Recent additions include dynamic prevent-destroy and a destroy lifecycle argument

State and planning

• State and plan encryption at rest, which Terraform does not offer natively
• Key providers: AWS KMS, GCP KMS, Azure Key Vault, OpenBao and PBKDF2
• Compatible with state files up to Terraform 1.5
• The project documents what encryption does not protect against, including operator access

What it can provision

• Around 4,700 providers in its own registry, separate from Terraform's
• Clouds, SaaS, Kubernetes and on-premises resources
• Databricks and Snowflake providers are available

Policy, testing and secrets

• Project governance by core team, technical lead and steering committee under the Linux Foundation
• Secrets in state addressed directly by built-in encryption with KMS key providers
• No first-party policy-as-code engine; the project ships the CLI only

Team workflow

• Remote state backends carry over from the Terraform lineage
• A public provider and module registry run by the project
• No hosted service, pull-request checks or private registry from the project itself

Integrations

• Provider ecosystem covering clouds, SaaS and Kubernetes
• Databricks and Snowflake providers for data platform work
• Third-party vendors supply the hosted workflow layer

How it runs

• CLI only, self-managed
• MPL 2.0 licence
• Commercial support comes from third-party vendors, not the foundation

Pricing

Open source

Free and open source under MPL 2.0, with no paid tier, hosted service or pricing page from the project. Commercial support and hosted workflows are sold by third-party vendors.

Vendor pricing page →

Demos and videos

• OpenTofu dual output stream showcase Product demo · YouTube
• OpenTofu channel Channel or playlist · YouTube (mostly steering committee recordings)

About Linux Foundation

OpenTofu is a Linux Foundation project, announced in September 2023 in response to Terraform's licence change and backed at launch by pledges from more than 140 organisations and 600 individuals, including Harness, Gruntwork, Spacelift, env0 and Scalr. It is MPL 2.0 licensed. Governance is a core team with a technical lead for day-to-day work and a steering committee for larger decisions, with the foundation holding the project specifically to reduce the risk of any single vendor capturing it.

opentofu.org