What is Spacelift? Key Features, Benefits & Use Cases

Orchestrating infrastructure involves far more than simply writing your infrastructure as code (IaC) and preparing your configuration management templates. It covers everything involved in provisioning, configuring, governing, and securing your infrastructure, all to improve your workflows and your overall developer velocity.

In this post, we will explore how Spacelift helps you with every aspect of your infrastructure orchestration and the mechanisms it uses for this purpose. We will also look at how Spacelift Intelligence brings AI-assisted deployment into the same governed workflow.

What we’ll cover:

1. What is Spacelift?
2. Spacelift core concepts
3. How does Spacelift work
4. What is Spacelift Intelligence?
5. Spacelift key features
6. What are the main benefits of using Spacelift?
7. Is Spacelift secure?
8. Getting started with Spacelift
9. How does Spacelift compare to other infrastructure tools

Spacelift is an infrastructure orchestration platform that helps platform and DevOps teams provision, configure, and govern infrastructure from a single control plane. It supports Terraform, OpenTofu, Pulumi, CloudFormation, Terragrunt, Ansible, and Kubernetes, so your team works in one place instead of stitching tools together. 

Spacelift Intelligence adds an AI infrastructure assistant and a natural-language deployment model on top, so teams move at AI speed without losing governance.

Spacelift helps you with the following use cases:

• Managing infrastructure at scale (infrastructure as code, configuration management, and container orchestration) – You can easily build control mechanisms, split your workflows into smaller ones to better identify where issues originate, and integrate dynamically with your cloud providers.
• Infrastructure governance – You rapidly provision and configure infrastructure in a single integrated workflow while giving you the control to manage risk and meet compliance requirements.
• Developer velocity – It reduces the burden of your infrastructure team to satisfy developers’ infrastructure requirements by enabling them to self-service in a secure way
• Collaboration – With Spacelift, infrastructure orchestration is multiplayer; you have an easy mechanism to collaborate, share ideas, approve/deny runs, and more.

How much does Spacelift cost?

Spacelift pricing scales with your team. It starts with an always-free plan for up to two users with one public worker, no credit card and no time limit.

From there, Starter+ adds unlimited users, more public workers, and your first private worker on an annual subscription. Business is for teams orchestrating infrastructure at scale, with three private workers, Blueprints, templates, and advanced scheduling. Enterprise adds the governance and security controls larger organizations need, including SSO, audit trails, and MFA. Enterprise+ is for teams that need self-hosted, on-premises, air-gapped, or FedRAMP deployment.

For current numbers and a full feature comparison, see the pricing page. Here is how the tiers break down:

Tier	Best for	Key Features	Price
Free	Individuals and small teams: two users, one public worker	IaC support, VCS integration, dependencies, resource visualization	$0
Starter+	Growing teams that need a private worker	Everything in Free, plus two public workers, one private worker, policy as code, drift detection, cloud cost estimation	$20,000 annual subscription
Business	Teams orchestrating infrastructure at scale	Everything in Starter+, plus three private workers, Blueprints, templates, advanced scheduling, private provider registry, Silver support, and a CSM	Request a quote
Enterprise	Companies that need enterprise governance and security	Everything in Business, plus 5 to 30 private workers, SSO with SAML 2.0, OIDC API keys, audit trail, MFA, Gold support	Request a quote
Enterprise+	Companies that need self-hosted, on-premises, or FedRAMP	Everything in Enterprise, plus 12 to 30 private workers, self-hosted, on-premises or air-gapped, FedRAMP	Request a quote

Who is Spacelift for?

Spacelift is built for platform engineering and DevOps teams that manage shared infrastructure across many teams and clouds. 

If you are the person keeping production stable while unblocking developers, and you have outgrown hand-built pipelines, Spacelift is built for your workflow. Engineering leaders choose it to ship faster without trading away security or control.

Let’s take a look at some of Spacelift’s core concepts before diving into how it works:

• Stacks – These are building blocks for your infrastructure that combine your source code, the tool you are using, and the environment in which you deploy your code
• Run – All the jobs that modify your infrastructure are called runs.
  • Stack runs
    • Tracked run – a form of deployment
    • Proposed run – a preview of changes
    • Task – an arbitrary command that you can execute on your infrastructure
  • Module runs
    • A module test case, very similar to a tracked run
• Spaces – These are logical containers for your Spacelift resources. Most Spacelift resources are spaced in the same way Kubernetes resources are namespaced. They can be used to implement RBAC, and they offer partial admin rights to your users.
• Worker – Similar to the runner in CI/CD, workers are used by stacks to carry out your workflows. They can be either public or private, and they progress through multiple stages to perform your workflow.
• Lifecycle hooks – This mechanism helps you control what happens before and after every worker phase.
• Contexts – These are logical containers for your environment variables, mounted files, and lifecycle hooks that can be reused by any number of stacks.
• Policy – Different types of policies based on OPA let you implement governance and compliance.
• Cloud integrations – These enable dynamic credentials for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
• Drift – This describes changes made outside your IaC processes.
• Blueprints – These are YAML templates for your stacks that enable you to self-serve infrastructure.
• Template – Reusable infrastructure-as-code configuration that can be deployed multiple times with different inputs
• Saturnhead Assist – Spacelift’s built-in AI assistant. It reads your run logs and explains them in plain language, so you can summarize any run phase or troubleshoot a failed run without sifting through logs by hand. 

Spacelift works in a straightforward way. You connect your VCS, create stacks from your repositories, and choose your preferred tool. Spacelift handles the deployment for you.

Watch this video to understand everything you can configure related to your stacks.

AI changed how developers ship code, and it changed what they expect from infrastructure. When every request runs through the same slow, ticket-driven process, the platform team turns back into the bottleneck. Spacelift Intelligence is the AI layer built to close that gap without giving up control.

It has two parts:

• Infra Assistant – An AI assistant that understands your infrastructure in plain language. Ask what is deployed and by whom, explain a change or a drift, get architecture and Terraform guidance grounded in your own stacks, and create or enforce policies without hand-writing Rego.
• Intent – A no-code, AI-based deployment model built for speed. Developers request infrastructure through their LLM using the Spacelift MCP server, and Intent turns that request into governed infrastructure actions. It runs under the same policies, credentials, and visibility as your IaC, without the Terraform ceremony.

Watch the video below to see how it works in practice:

The point is two coordinated paths, not one. Use Intent for tests, proofs of concept, and rapid experiments where you want speed. Use IaC and GitOps as the governed system of record for production, where you want control. Policies, credentials, visibility, and audit are shared across both.

Learn more about Spacelift Intelligence and Intent.

Here are some of the key features that Spacelift offers:

• Multi-infrastructure tool support – Terraform, OpenTofu, Kubernetes, Ansible, Pulumi, CloudFormation, Terragrunt
• Governance and compliance through policy as code (based on Open Policy Agent)
  • Plan policies – ability to restrict resources or certain resource parameters
  • Approval policies – require multiple approvals for runs
  • Push policies – control what happens when a PR is open or merged
  • Notification policies – control where to send notifications
  • Policy library – Open Policy Agent uses Rego to write policies, but getting Rego right can be hard, so we offer a library of pre-existing policies that you can easily leverage.
• Dependencies workflows – You can create dependencies between your workflows and even share outputs between them. This works with different tools on as many nested levels as you want. This mechanism allows you to keep your state files small, easily identify issues, and build an end-to-end workflow.
• Resource and configuration management view – This is a unified view of all the resources Spacelift deploys and all the Ansible tasks and roles run on your hosts.
• Self-service infrastructure – You can use Blueprints as self-service templates and integrate with ServiceNow to provision resources from Kubernetes.
• Native integrations with the major cloud providers – Spacelift offers dynamic and short-lived credentials for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.
• Integrate with any tools you want – Leveraging lifecycle hooks and bringing your own runner image enables you to integrate with any tools you want. You can also use Spacelift’s custom inputs to easily implement policies for your third-party tools.
• Terraform provider for Spacelift – Spacelift is an API-first company, so whatever you can do from the UI, you can do from the API. To make it even easier, Spacelift has its own Terraform provider, which supports all the resources.
• Advanced scheduling
  • Drift detection and remediation – Detect infrastructure drift and optionally remediate it.
  • Tasks – Run custom tasks against your stacks on a predefined schedule.
  • Stack deletion – Delete stacks on a schedule.
  • Runs – Run your stacks on a predefined schedule.
• Module and provider registry – Host your modules and providers.
• AI-assisted deployment – The Infra Assistant answers questions about your infrastructure in plain language, and Intent lets developers and their agents provision governed infrastructure without writing Terraform.

Spacelift offers several benefits, such as:

• Out-of-the-box workflows for your favorite infrastructure tools – With Spacelift, you don’t need to worry about writing complex pipelines or taking care of dependencies between your workflows
• Infrastructure scaling – Build scalable workflows that respect all the standards your organization imposes, enabling you to deploy, scale, and manage your infrastructure easily
• Increased security – Spacelift’s security-first development approach ensures that everything you do with the product stays safe (learn more about Spacelift’s security architecture and features)
• Eliminates collaboration bottlenecks – You can easily preview the implications of applying a change to your infrastructure while deciding as a team if the changes make sense.
• Powerful observability– Get insights into all your resources and their drift status in a single view
• Amplified developer velocity – Easily build self-service templates that free up your developers’ time, and let them focus on implementing new features for your applications
• Meets you where you are – Spacelift’s integration with ServiceNow lets your developers spin up infrastructure directly using ServiceNow’s Service Catalog.

Security sits at the core of how Spacelift is built, from the product architecture to the governance controls it gives you. The mechanisms that matter most:

• Dynamic, short-lived credentials – Spacelift issues temporary credentials for AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, so you are not storing long-lived cloud secrets.
• Policy as code – Open Policy Agent (OPA) policies let you control login, access, and what each run is allowed to do.
• Private workers – Run workloads in your own environment, encrypted with your private key.
• Encryption everywhere – All data is encrypted at rest and in transit.
• Immutable audit trail – Track every change, who made it, when, and why, so audits stay painless.
• SSO and access control – Single sign-on (SSO) with SAML 2.0, role-based access control through Spaces, and MFA on higher tiers.
• Flexible deployment – Run Spacelift as SaaS, self-hosted on your own cloud, or fully on-premises, including air-gapped environments.

On compliance, Spacelift holds SOC 2 Type II certification and is the first IaC orchestration platform to receive FedRAMP authorization. You can review its posture in the Trust Center, and read more about Spacelift’s security architecture.

To get started with Spacelift, go to our website and click on the Free trial button.

Next, select the way you want to create the account:

For this example, we will choose GitLab. 

Next, add a name for your account:

Then authorize Spacelift to access your GitLab account:

As soon as you authorize Spacelift, you will see a form that will help us better understand your use case and how we can support you better:

After you click on Get started, you will be redirected to your Spacelift account in the LaunchPad.

LaunchPad will help you get started with your checklist. 

The first step is to integrate your Source code, so click on that in Launchpad. Then, click on Set up integration and choose your VCS provider. For this example, we will use GitLab.

Add the information required to set up the GitLab integration. If you don’t have a token, you will need to create one, as shown here.

After you finish adding the details, click on Set up.

Now, you should see your integration inside your Spacelift account. Test it to ensure that everything runs smoothly.

Now, let’s create a stack. To do that, we will go to our Stacks on the left-hand side of the menu and select Create Stack. 

First, we add a name for our Stack and select a Space for it. Then, we can add other details, such as descriptions and labels.

After we have done this, we can select Continue and proceed to the next step. We should be able to see our repositories getting automatically populated:

We will choose the random_pet repository, which will create five random pets using Terraform. 

In the next screen, we will choose what tool we will use, and for this one, let’s select Terraform as mentioned before:

Then we can select Create & continue, then Skip to Summary, and finally Confirm.

Our stack has been created successfully, so we will now trigger a run:

First, we can see a plan of what our stack will create:

Next, we can apply the code and wait for the resources to be created:

As you can see, the process of setting up your Spacelift account is straightforward, and you can reap the benefits from the beginning. We didn’t have to build any complex workflows for state management or deployment to be able to run our code.

Spacelift has more parallels with generic CI/CD pipelines than with Terraform or Ansible. It supports Terraform and Ansible workflows, and you can easily integrate them into a single workflow. You can even share the inventory as an output from Terraform to your Ansible stack.

It is similar to a generic CI/CD pipeline because it helps you with the actual CI and CD for your infrastructure tools.

However, there are many differences between Spacelift and generic CI/CD tools:

Features	Spacelift	Generic CI/CD tools
Maintenance	✅No maintenance is required for SaaS; you are in charge of updates for self-hosted.	⚠️Depends on what generic CI/CD tool you are using
Dependencies workflow	✅Yes – works out of the box	⚠️Requires complex configuration – you need to change your code configuration and pipeline(s) to accommodate a use case like this.
Self-service workflows	✅Yes – works out of the box	⚠️Requires complex configuration – build dedicated pipelines for self-service that can be hard to maintain
State management	✅Yes – works out of the box	⚠️This falls under the user’s responsibility
Advanced scheduling	✅Yes – works out of the box	⚠️Requires complex configuration – dedicated pipelines required
Observability	✅ Built-in for both IaC and Configuration Management	❌No, you need a third-party tool for that
Dynamic credentials	✅Yes – works out of the box	❌No
Ease of use	✅ Easy to use — you don’t need to learn a new language.	⚠️Depending on what generic CI/CD you are using, the process can be really hard
Policy as code	✅Yes – works out of the box	⚠️Yes – you need to implement the policy + the pipeline logic.
Drift detection and remediation	✅Yes – works out of the box	⚠️Yes – not supported natively but can be configured using third-party tools (hard process)
AI-assisted deployment	✅ Yes, via the Infra Assistant and Intent, with the same policies and visibility as IaC	❌ No

With generic CI/CD tools, you won’t get state management or drift detection out of the box, which makes your systems vulnerable. This means your DevOps teams will have difficulties solving issues, resulting in downtime and reduced customer retention. 

Without policy-as-code, the risk of noncompliance is high, and the risk of misconfigurations and cost spikes is even higher.

Spacelift can also be used with generic CI/CD pipelines, especially if you are using Spacelift’s Terraform provider to spin up all the Spacelift resources required by your organization. This approach ensures that your Spacelift configuration is version-controlled and easy to reproduce.

Comparing Spacelift to a specific tool? See how it stacks up against Terraform Cloud, Terraform Enterprise, and Atlantis.

Spacelift is a one-stop solution for provisioning, configuring, and governing your infrastructure. It supports a wide range of tools and offers robust security, observability, governance, collaboration, and self-service capabilities, providing organizations with a mature, powerful solution for all their infrastructure needs.

If you want to learn more about Spacelift, book a demo with one of our engineers.