What is Pulumi?

Pulumi is an open source infrastructure as code platform that lets you define, deploy, and manage cloud infrastructure using general-purpose programming languages — TypeScript, Python, JavaScript, Go, .NET, and Java — plus YAML and HCL. It provisions resources across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, and 180+ providers, and pairs with Pulumi Cloud for state, secrets, policy, and AI-assisted operations.

Pulumi treats infrastructure as software: instead of a templating language or a fixed schema, teams write real programs — with loops, functions, tests, and packages — that generate and manage cloud resources. Whichever language a team picks, Pulumi Cloud adds collaboration, governance, and AI-assisted workflows on top through one platform, not a set of disconnected add-ons.

Pulumi at a glance

The evolution of infrastructure management

Managing cloud infrastructure has historically meant clicking through web consoles, writing brittle scripts, or learning a tool-specific templating language — approaches that get harder to maintain as environments grow. To understand Pulumi’s significance, it’s helpful to consider how infrastructure management has evolved. In the early days of cloud computing, infrastructure was typically managed through web consoles or command-line interfaces. While functional, this approach suffered from poor repeatability, limited collaboration capabilities, and difficulty tracking changes over time.

The introduction of infrastructure as code (IaC) tools like Terraform and AWS CloudFormation represented a significant improvement, enabling teams to define infrastructure declaratively and version control their configurations. These tools introduced domain-specific languages with their own learning curves. They favor a constrained, declarative model, while general-purpose languages trade that simplicity for richer abstraction and reuse.

Pulumi represents the next evolution in this space by embracing what the company calls “infrastructure as software.” This approach enables teams to leverage the full software engineering ecosystem (including testing frameworks, package managers, IDEs, and development workflows) when managing their cloud infrastructure.

Pulumi in the AI coding era

The emergence of AI-powered code generation tools is fundamentally transforming how software is developed. More code is being written faster than ever before, with AI assistants generating complex applications and infrastructure configurations at unprecedented speeds. However, this shift brings both opportunities and challenges that make platforms like Pulumi more essential, not less.

While AI can accelerate code creation, it doesn’t eliminate the need for governance, security, and operational best practices. In fact, as teams generate more code with potentially less deep understanding of every component, the importance of having robust infrastructure management practices becomes even more critical. Code still needs to run securely, cost-effectively, and in compliance with organizational policies regardless of how it was created.

Pulumi serves as the essential building block for this AI-driven future, functioning as “Git for your cloud infrastructure.” Just as version control systems became indispensable as software development scaled, infrastructure as code platforms have become crucial as AI accelerates both application and infrastructure development. The platform provides the governance layer that ensures AI-generated infrastructure follows organizational standards, security requirements, and cost controls.

The combination of AI coding tools with Pulumi’s platform capabilities, particularly through Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs), enables organizations to marry the speed and creativity of AI-assisted development with the reliability and governance required for production cloud environments. This approach prevents AI from becoming the new “ClickOps,” where rapid changes bypass proper controls and oversight.

How Pulumi works

At its core, Pulumi follows a declarative model where you describe your desired infrastructure state in code, and the platform handles the complexities of provisioning, updating, and managing cloud resources to achieve that state. This process involves several key components working together seamlessly.

The Pulumi SDK provides language-specific libraries that offer strongly-typed bindings for cloud resources across 200+ providers. These libraries enable developers to define infrastructure using familiar programming constructs like functions, loops, conditionals, and classes, while providing rich IDE support including IntelliSense, error checking, and refactoring capabilities.

When you run a Pulumi program, the deployment engine analyzes your code, computes the necessary changes to reach your desired state, and executes those changes in the optimal order while respecting resource dependencies. The engine maintains a detailed record of your infrastructure state, enabling features like drift detection, rollback capabilities, and collaborative workflows.

The Pulumi CLI serves as the primary interface for managing deployments, providing commands for previewing changes, executing deployments, and managing the infrastructure lifecycle. For teams requiring additional collaboration and governance features, Pulumi Cloud offers a managed service that provides centralized state management, team collaboration tools, policy enforcement, and detailed audit trails.

Key concepts and architecture

Understanding Pulumi’s architecture requires familiarity with several foundational concepts that distinguish it from traditional infrastructure tools.

Projects and stacks form the organizational backbone of Pulumi’s approach. A project represents a directory containing your infrastructure code and metadata, while stacks provide isolated instances of your project for different environments like development, staging, and production. This separation enables teams to manage multiple environments from a single codebase while maintaining appropriate isolation and configuration differences.

Resources represent the fundamental building blocks of your infrastructure, from individual cloud services like AWS S3 buckets to complex, multi-resource constructs like entire application architectures. Pulumi’s resource model supports both primitive resources that map directly to cloud provider APIs and component resources that encapsulate multiple resources into reusable abstractions.

Configuration and secrets management is handled through an advanced system that provides stack-specific configuration values while ensuring sensitive information remains encrypted. Pulumi ESC (Environments, Secrets, and Configuration) extends this capability by providing centralized secrets management across environments and applications, integrating with existing secret stores and identity providers.

The state management system maintains a comprehensive record of your infrastructure’s current state, enabling Pulumi to compute the minimal set of changes needed for any deployment. Unlike some tools that store state in plain text, Pulumi encrypts sensitive information by default and provides robust state management capabilities through both local and cloud-based backends.

The Pulumi Registry: A comprehensive ecosystem

The Pulumi Registry represents one of Pulumi’s most significant advantages over traditional infrastructure tools. This comprehensive ecosystem provides access to over 200 cloud and SaaS providers through a unified, multi-language interface that goes far beyond what any single cloud provider offers.

Native cloud providers

Pulumi maintains native, first-party providers for major cloud platforms that offer same-day support for new services and features. The AWS provider covers over 900 resources, while Azure Native provides access to the full Azure API surface area, and Google Cloud offers comprehensive coverage of GCP services. These native providers are generated directly from cloud provider APIs, ensuring immediate access to new features without waiting for community contributions or manual updates.

Beyond traditional clouds

The registry extends far beyond traditional cloud providers to include specialized services that modern applications depend on. Teams can manage Datadog monitoring, Auth0 identity, GitHub repositories, Cloudflare edge services, and dozens of other SaaS platforms using the same patterns and languages they use for their core infrastructure.

Community and official packages

The registry combines official packages maintained by Pulumi with a growing ecosystem of community contributions. Popular packages include Kubernetes operators, Docker configurations, and specialized industry solutions. Each package is automatically generated for all supported programming languages, meaning a single package definition provides TypeScript, Python, Go, .NET, and Java bindings.

AWSx components

Pulumi AWSx components represent opinionated, well-architected patterns for common cloud scenarios. These components encapsulate cloud provider best practices into higher-level abstractions, enabling teams to deploy production-ready architectures with minimal code. For example, AWSx provides secure, scalable patterns for containers, serverless applications, and data processing pipelines.

The power of real programming languages

One of Pulumi’s defining features is the breadth of languages it supports: general-purpose languages like TypeScript, Python, JavaScript, Go, .NET, and Java, alongside YAML and HCL. Teams can pick the language that best fits how they already work, which shapes how they approach infrastructure management.

Using familiar programming languages means developers can apply existing skills and knowledge to infrastructure problems. They can use the full ecosystem of language features, including package managers, testing frameworks, and development tools, while still reaching for declarative formats like YAML or HCL when those fit better. The result is infrastructure code that’s easier to maintain and build on.

The ability to use standard programming constructs like loops, conditionals, and functions enables dynamic infrastructure definitions that would be difficult or impossible with templating-based approaches. For example, you might programmatically create resources based on environment variables, implement complex business logic within your infrastructure code, or generate resources based on external data sources.

Furthermore, Pulumi’s language support extends beyond basic resource definitions to include comprehensive testing capabilities. Teams can write unit tests for their infrastructure code, validate resource configurations before deployment, and implement integration tests to ensure their infrastructure behaves correctly in different scenarios.

Advanced platform capabilities

Pulumi goes beyond basic infrastructure provisioning to provide a comprehensive platform for modern cloud engineering.

Automation API

The Automation API enables teams to embed infrastructure management directly into their applications, creating custom deployment tools, self-service portals, and dynamic infrastructure provisioning systems. This programmatic approach enables organizations to build advanced infrastructure automation that integrates seamlessly with their development workflows, particularly valuable when dealing with AI-generated code that requires automated deployment pipelines.

Policy as Code with Pulumi Policies

Pulumi Policies provides policy as code capabilities that are both open source and free, unlike competitive offerings. Teams can write policies in Python, JavaScript, or Open Policy Agent (OPA) Rego to enforce security, compliance, and cost controls across their entire infrastructure. These policies run server-side and can provide automated remediation, ensuring that all infrastructure deployments (whether created by humans or AI) meet organizational standards.

Pulumi ESC for secrets and configuration

Pulumi ESC addresses one of the most critical challenges in modern cloud operations: secrets and configuration management. This service provides centralized, auditable secrets management that can pull from multiple secret stores, generate dynamic short-lived credentials via OIDC, and compose configurations across environments. ESC can be used with or without Pulumi IaC, making it valuable for any cloud application.

AI-powered development assistance

Pulumi integrates artificial intelligence to accelerate infrastructure development while maintaining quality and governance standards. Pulumi AI can generate infrastructure code from natural language descriptions, translate between different infrastructure tools, and provide intelligent suggestions based on best practices. This AI integration helps teams achieve dramatic productivity improvements while ensuring that generated code follows organizational patterns and policies.

Multi-cloud and provider ecosystem

Pulumi’s architecture supports an extensive ecosystem of cloud providers, enabling teams to adopt multi-cloud strategies or migrate between providers without rewriting their infrastructure code. The platform maintains native providers for major cloud platforms like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform, ensuring same-day support for new cloud services and features.

This multi-cloud capability extends beyond traditional cloud providers to include specialized services like Cloudflare, Datadog, Auth0, and GitHub, as well as private cloud technologies like VMware vSphere and OpenStack. The consistent API across all providers means teams can apply the same patterns and practices regardless of their underlying infrastructure choices.

The provider ecosystem also includes community-maintained providers and the ability to create custom providers for internal services or specialized requirements. This extensibility ensures that Pulumi can adapt to virtually any infrastructure environment or organizational need.

Enterprise-grade security and governance

Pulumi provides comprehensive security and governance capabilities that meet the needs of the largest enterprises while remaining accessible to smaller teams.

Security by default

Unlike tools that store secrets in plain text, Pulumi encrypts all sensitive information by default, both in transit and at rest. The platform maintains SOC 2 Type II compliance and provides comprehensive audit trails for all infrastructure changes. Integration with existing security tools and identity providers ensures that Pulumi fits seamlessly into enterprise security practices.

Team collaboration and governance

Pulumi Cloud provides sophisticated team management capabilities, including role-based access controls, stack-level permissions, and policy enforcement across the entire organization. Teams can implement GitOps workflows, automated testing, and deployment pipelines while maintaining the security and governance controls required for enterprise environments.

Self-hosted deployment options

For organizations with strict data sovereignty requirements, Pulumi offers self-hosted deployment options that provide the same enterprise features while maintaining complete control over data and infrastructure. These options support air-gapped environments and can be deployed in private clouds or on-premises infrastructure.

Real-world applications and success stories

Organizations across various industries have adopted Pulumi to address diverse infrastructure challenges, demonstrating the platform’s versatility and effectiveness in real-world scenarios.

Snowflake, a leading cloud data platform, used Pulumi to reduce its deployment time from 1.5 weeks to a single day while improving reliability and maintainability. The ability to use familiar programming languages enabled their development teams to contribute directly to infrastructure management, reducing silos between development and operations.

BMW manages infrastructure for over 11,000 developers using Pulumi, leveraging the platform’s collaboration features and policy enforcement capabilities to maintain consistency and security across their global development organization. The company particularly benefits from Pulumi’s ability to create reusable components that encapsulate their infrastructure best practices.

Starburst achieved a 112x improvement in deployment speed, reducing deployment times from two weeks to just three hours. This dramatic improvement was enabled by Pulumi’s testing capabilities and the ability to create sophisticated deployment pipelines using familiar programming languages.

These success stories demonstrate how Pulumi enables organizations to achieve substantial improvements in deployment speed, developer productivity, and operational reliability while maintaining the security and governance capabilities required for enterprise environments.

Competitive advantages and positioning

When compared to established infrastructure as code tools, Pulumi offers several distinct advantages that address common pain points in infrastructure management.

Tools like Terraform center on a domain-specific language built for IaC. Pulumi lets teams use languages they already know, and now supports HCL as well, so adopting it builds on existing skills while providing access to the full ecosystem of development tools and practices.

The testing capabilities represent another significant advantage. While some tools offer limited testing options, Pulumi’s integration with language-native testing frameworks enables comprehensive testing strategies including unit tests, integration tests, and property-based testing approaches.

Security represents a critical differentiator, particularly regarding secrets management. While some tools store sensitive information in plain text within state files, Pulumi encrypts secrets by default and provides comprehensive secrets management capabilities that integrate with existing organizational security practices.

The provider ecosystem and same-day support for new cloud services ensure that teams can take advantage of the latest cloud capabilities without waiting for provider updates or community contributions. This agility is particularly important in rapidly evolving cloud environments where new services and features are constantly being introduced.

Additionally, Pulumi’s open source foundation under the Apache 2.0 license provides greater flexibility compared to tools with more restrictive licensing models, ensuring that organizations can adopt and modify the platform according to their needs without vendor lock-in concerns.

The future of cloud engineering and platform engineering

Pulumi’s approach reflects broader trends in cloud engineering that emphasize developer productivity, collaboration, and the application of software engineering practices to infrastructure management. As cloud environments become increasingly complex and organizations adopt multi-cloud strategies, the need for sophisticated infrastructure management tools continues to grow.

The platform’s emphasis on treating infrastructure as software aligns with the DevOps movement and the broader trend toward breaking down silos between development and operations teams. By enabling developers to contribute directly to infrastructure management using familiar tools and languages, Pulumi helps organizations achieve the collaborative, cross-functional approach that defines modern cloud engineering.

Platform engineering represents one of the most significant trends in modern cloud operations, and Pulumi provides purpose-built capabilities to make all aspects of platform engineering vastly simpler. The platform enables organizations to build internal developer platforms that provide self-service capabilities while maintaining security, scalability, repeatability, and consistency.

In the emerging AI-driven development landscape, Pulumi’s governance and policy capabilities become even more crucial. As AI tools generate infrastructure code at unprecedented speeds, organizations require robust platforms that ensure generated code adheres to security policies, cost controls, and operational best practices while enabling the rapid innovation that AI makes possible.

Looking forward, Pulumi continues to evolve with features like AI-powered assistance for infrastructure development, enhanced policy enforcement capabilities, and deeper integration with cloud-native development workflows. These developments position Pulumi as a platform that not only addresses current infrastructure challenges but also anticipates the needs of future cloud engineering practices in an AI-augmented world.

Getting started with Pulumi

For organizations interested in exploring Pulumi, the platform offers multiple entry points depending on your current infrastructure management approach and technical requirements.

Teams with existing infrastructure can leverage Pulumi’s import capabilities to bring existing resources under management without disrupting current operations. The platform provides converters for Terraform configurations, AWS CloudFormation templates, Azure Resource Manager templates, and Kubernetes YAML, enabling gradual adoption where teams can start with new projects while progressively migrating existing infrastructure.

The extensive library of example programs and templates in the Pulumi Registry provides starting points for common infrastructure patterns, enabling teams to quickly understand best practices and adapt them to their specific requirements. These examples span multiple cloud providers and use cases, from simple web applications to complex multi-tier architectures and AI/ML workloads.

For teams with specific requirements or complex existing infrastructure, Pulumi offers professional services and consulting to help organizations design and implement infrastructure strategies that align with their business objectives and technical constraints. This includes migration planning, architecture design, and training programs to ensure successful adoption.

The platform provides comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and learning resources that help teams get started quickly while building expertise over time. The community-driven support model, combined with enterprise support options, ensures that organizations can get the assistance they need at every stage of their cloud journey.

Conclusion

The choice to use general-purpose programming languages is not a convenience feature; it’s what lets the rest of software engineering follow infrastructure into the cloud. Once your infrastructure is real code, your tests, package managers, code review, and policy checks apply to it without translation, which is a capability that templating languages structurally cannot offer no matter how many functions they bolt on.

That distinction matters most now, when AI can generate infrastructure faster than any team can manually review it. The bottleneck shifts from writing infrastructure to governing it, and the platforms that treat infrastructure as software already have the testing, policy, and state machinery to keep that speed from outrunning your controls. If you remember one thing from this article, it’s that infrastructure as software is less about which language you type and more about which engineering disciplines you get to reuse.

Get started with Pulumi to see this in your own stack.

Frequently asked questions

What is Pulumi used for?

Pulumi is used to define, deploy, and manage cloud infrastructure as code — provisioning resources like virtual machines, databases, Kubernetes clusters, and serverless functions across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and 180+ other providers. Teams use it to replace manual console clicks and brittle scripts with versioned, testable infrastructure programs written in a language they already know.

What languages does Pulumi support?

Pulumi supports general-purpose programming languages — TypeScript, Python, JavaScript, Go, .NET, and Java — plus YAML and HCL for teams that prefer a declarative format. Because Pulumi programs are real code, they get full IDE support, static typing, automated testing, and package management: capabilities that templating languages and fixed-schema DSLs don’t provide natively.

Is Pulumi open source?

Yes. Pulumi’s core SDK and providers are open source under the Apache 2.0 license, and the CLI and language SDKs are free to use. Pulumi Cloud, the optional managed backend for state, secrets, and policy, offers a free Individual edition plus paid Team, Enterprise, and Business Critical editions for organizations that need collaboration and governance at scale.

How is Pulumi different from Terraform?

Terraform and OpenTofu use HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL), a domain-specific language built around a fixed schema. Pulumi lets you use general-purpose languages instead — and, with native HCL support and a Terraform state backend, can also work directly with existing HCL configurations. The difference is optionality: Pulumi adds full programming-language capability without giving up compatibility.

Can Pulumi manage AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud at the same time?

Yes. Pulumi provides native providers for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, along with Kubernetes and 180+ other providers, so a single program can define resources across multiple clouds using one consistent language and one deployment engine — no separate tools or state stores per provider required.

Is Pulumi free?

Pulumi’s CLI, SDKs, and providers are free and open source. Pulumi Cloud, the managed platform for state, secrets, and team collaboration, includes a free Individual edition; the Team edition adds multi-user collaboration and organization-managed policy enforcement for growing teams, and the Enterprise and Business Critical editions add role-based access control, advanced policy controls, and premium support for organizations running infrastructure at scale.

What is Pulumi Cloud?

Pulumi Cloud is the managed platform layer that sits on top of Pulumi’s open-source engine. It provides state storage, Pulumi ESC for secrets and configuration, policy as code, Pulumi Discovery for cloud estate visibility, and Neo, an AI infrastructure agent — the collaboration and governance capabilities teams need once more than one person touches the same infrastructure.

Learn more

Ready to experience infrastructure as software? Explore Pulumi’s comprehensive platform and discover how it can transform your approach to cloud infrastructure management.

• Get started with Pulumi
• Explore the registry
• Read customer success stories
• Compare infrastructure as code tools
• Pulumi vs. Terraform

Related topics

• What is Infrastructure as Code?
• What is Infrastructure as Software?
• What is DevOps?
• What is Platform Engineering?