OpenTofu

OpenTofu is an open source infrastructure as code tool, Terraform-compatible and hosted by the Linux Foundation, for teams managing cloud resources in code.

OpenTofu turns declarative configuration files into running infrastructure, then creates, changes and destroys those objects from one command line. It serves as a drop-in replacement for Terraform, so existing configurations and workflows carry over. The project began as a fork, announced on 25 August 2023 after HashiCorp changed Terraform's license on 10 August, and was first named OpenTF. The Linux Foundation hosts it through OpenTofu a Series of LF Projects, LLC. It joined the Cloud Native Computing Foundation as a Sandbox project on 23 April 2025, and its code is released under the Mozilla Public License 2.0. Infrastructure is written in the OpenTofu language. Provider blocks name the plugins to install from the public OpenTofu Registry, and resource blocks declare what should exist. The tofu plan command creates an execution plan that previews the changes OpenTofu intends to make. Running tofu apply then prompts the operator to approve that plan, unless the -auto-approve flag skips the prompt. State can sit in a remote backend that locks it during writes, and State and Plan Encryption protects both files at rest. Import blocks bring existing objects under management, the terraform_remote_state data source reads another configuration's outputs, and check blocks evaluate custom conditions. OpenTofu is built for platform engineers, DevOps teams and developers who keep their infrastructure as code. It suits organisations that want a Terraform-compatible tool under the Linux Foundation's stewardship rather than tied to one company's license. Teams with existing Terraform configurations can switch while keeping the workflows they already run. It is open source software that each team installs and runs itself. Teams that want hosted runs and shared collaboration pair it with a third-party platform that runs OpenTofu. Day one often means a single file that creates an S3 bucket on AWS. The next might manage DNS records in Cloudflare or set up GitHub repositories with branch protection and team access. Each file lives in version control, so a team tracks every infrastructure change and deploys it with a single command. Providers from the registry carry that workflow to the other cloud platforms a team uses. OpenTofu fits a team that wants its infrastructure described in files it owns and applied by a community-driven tool.