Terraform and Crossplane can both provision cloud infrastructure, but they come from two different worlds.
Terraform is a standalone CLI workflow built around plan/apply and explicit execution. Crossplane runs inside Kubernetes and behaves more like a control plane, continuously reconciling desired state through the Kubernetes API. That difference changes everything: how you think about drift, how changes roll out, how teams collaborate, and what “source of truth” looks like.
In the full comparison, we break down:
- The core architectural difference (CLI runs vs controller reconciliation)
- Workflow and configuration models (HCL + state vs Kubernetes-native resources)
- Where each tool tends to fit best (Kubernetes-heavy orgs, platform teams, app teams)
- Common decision points: learning curve, governance, day-2 ops, and scale
- A pragmatic hybrid approach: using Terraform for foundational infra and Crossplane for app-owned resources
➡️ Read the full article on our blog: https://spacelift.io/blog/crossplane-vs-terraform
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