AWS CDK Pros and Cons

AWS CDK Pros

Deep AWS integration with best-practice constructs. Familiar programming languages with excellent IDE support. High-level L3 constructs for common patterns. Free and open-source. CDK Pipelines automates deployment. Strong testing framework for infrastructure code.

AWS CDK Cons

AWS-only focus limits multi-cloud use. Inherits CloudFormation limitations (resource limits, slow deployments, complexity). Requires understanding of both CDK and CloudFormation. Smaller community than Terraform. Some constructs lag behind AWS service updates.

Best For

AWS CDK is best for AWS-centric organizations that want infrastructure-as-code with familiar programming languages. It excels for teams already invested in the AWS ecosystem who want to avoid learning a DSL.