AWS CDK Alternatives

AWS CDK is AWS-only, making it unsuitable for multi-cloud organizations. Teams that need to manage infrastructure across AWS, Azure, and GCP should evaluate Terraform or Pulumi. Kubernetes-native teams may prefer Crossplane for managing infrastructure through K8s CRDs.

Terraform is the top alternative for multi-cloud IaC. It supports 3,900+ providers across all major clouds, SaaS tools, and on-premises systems. Terraform uses HCL (a DSL), which requires learning a new language but offers a mature, battle-tested workflow.

Pulumi offers a multi-cloud alternative that also uses programming languages like Terraform. It supports AWS, Azure, GCP, and 170+ other providers. Pulumis Automation API enables embedding infrastructure provisioning in applications, which AWS CDK does not offer.

Crossplane is the Kubernetes-native alternative. It runs inside a Kubernetes cluster and uses CRDs to represent infrastructure resources. For platform teams already running K8s, Crossplane enables managing AWS resources through the same GitOps workflows as applications.