Terraform Enterprise alternative
Spacelift [Self-Hosted] is a highly cost-effective Terraform Enterprise alternative that unlocks multi-IaC workflows for Terraform, OpenTofu, Terragrunt, Kubernetes, Ansible, AWS CloudFormation, and Pulumi. With Spacelift, you can truly customize your workflow to suit your needs while keeping your infrastructure secure.
Cost-effective, tailored support for every customer
- Effective pricing structure, based on concurrency, that is stable and predictable.
- Great support for all enterprise customers – not just for the ones that spend extra.
- Tailored support to meet individual customer needs.
Vast potential for integrations
- Future-proof your IaC: Spacelift supports Terraform, Terragrunt, OpenTofu, Custom Terraform, Kubernetes, Ansible, Cloud Formation, and Pulumi.
- Capability to build multi-IaC workflows.
- Unlimited integrations.
Streamlined failure management
- Get policies across multiple decision points.
- Split deployments between multiple stacks and create dependencies to identify failures better.
- Manage resources with a full inventory management solution – not just resource view per workspace.
Spacelift Self-Hosted vs Terraform Enterprise
Predictable and Cost-effective Pricing
Yes
No
Multi-IaC Workflow
Yes
No
Dependencies Workflow
Yes
No
VCS Integrations
Yes
Yes
RBAC
Yes
Yes
Private Workers
Yes
Yes
Terraform Provider
Yes
Yes
Integrations
Unlimited integrations
Integrations limited to run tasks
Full Workflow Control
Full control over your workflow by bringing your image, modifying the default workflow, and hooks in runner phases
Limited to what TFE lets you do
Policies across Various Decision Points
Control almost any aspect of the platform through policies
Only the equivalent of plan and approval policies
Resource Management
Full inventory management solution including visualization, lifecycle tracking, search, and filtering
Resource view only per workspace
Targeted Runs
Native
Only with env var
Atlantis-style Workflow
Yes
Partial
Custom Tasks
Yes
No
Drift Detection
Yes
Yes
Advanced Scheduling
Yes
No
SSO (OIDC & SAML)
Yes
Yes
State Management
Managed + optional ability to use other backends
Managed only
Credential-less Integrations with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud
Yes
Yes
Support
Yes
Yes
Private Registry
Yes
Yes
Cost Estimation
Yes
Yes
Why is Spacelift the best alternative to Terraform Enterprise?
Multi-IaC workflow
IaC is never single-player, so having the flexibility to build workflows for different IaC tools and combining them unlocks unlimited possibilities. With Stack Dependencies — directed acyclic graphs that allow you to build dependencies on as many nested levels as you want —you get that flexibility, plus the ability to pass outputs from one stack to another.
Stack dependencies use cases
- Easily deploy your Amazon EC2 instance with a Terraform stack, and then pass these as outputs to your Ansible stack to configure them. Read more here.
- Easily deploy your K8s cluster with a Terraform stack, and then pass the kube config as an output to your Kubernetes stack to deploy resources inside it. Read more here.
- Streamline environment promotion by building dependencies between multiple IaC stacks to automate as much as you want.
- Do more, with the flexibility to build as many dependencies as you want.
Fully customizable workflow
With Spacelift you can modify your workflows flexibly:
- Control what happens before and after every runner phase, with hooks.
- Bring your own image.
- Run custom tasks.
- Customize the default workflow commands with the Workflow tool.
Policies across various decision points
- Deny/show warnings for the use of some resources or parameters of those resources with Plan Policies.
- Define as many approvals as you require to run a stack with approval policies.
- Control what happens when a git push is done or a pull request is open, with push policies.
- Decide if some tracked runs should be triggered – trigger policies.
- Filter, route, and adjust the body of notification messages – notification policies.
Unlimited integrations
Spacelift integrates with any tool you want, thanks to custom inputs and the notification policy. For example, use custom inputs to define policies for a third-party tool, enabling you to enhance your security by adding tools such as tfscan, Checkov, or Terrascan to your workflow. Take observability to the next level and leverage the notification policy to build integrations with tools such as Datadog and Prometheus.
Self-service infrastructure
Let software engineers get back to development by giving them what they need – self-service infrastructure. With Spacelift’s Blueprints, you get templates for:
- IaC code
- policies attached to that code
- authentication to the cloud provider
- environment variables and shared variables
- advanced scheduling
- drift detection
- and more
Terraform resources
Terraform Enterprise / Cloud Workspaces vs. Spacelift Stacks
Terraform Automation and Collaboration Software (TACOS) are becoming an industry standard for managing Terraform codebases at scale. See the differences and similarities between Terraform Enterprise / Cloud workspaces and Spacelift stacks and examples of how to use them.
See the differences and similarities between Terraform Enterprise / Cloud workspaces and Spacelift stacks and examples of how to use them.
Learn moreHow to Migrate From Terraform Cloud / Enterprise to Spacelift
If you want to migrate from Terraform Cloud or Enterprise, we are here to help - learn how to use our Spacelift Migration Kit to speed up the process.
If you want to migrate from Terraform Cloud or Enterprise, we are here to help - learn how to use our Spacelift Migration Kit to speed up the process.
Learn moreTerraform Cloud Agents vs. Spacelift Workers
See the comparison and learn about the differences between Terraform Cloud agents and Spacelift workers.
See the comparison and learn about the differences between Terraform Cloud agents and Spacelift workers.
Learn moreTop 10 Terraform Enterprise Alternatives
What is the best Terraform Enterprise (TFE) alternative? See the competitors and their features to find the right tool for your organization.
What is the best Terraform Enterprise (TFE) alternative? See the competitors and their features to find the right tool for your organization.
Learn more
What our customers say
- "I’ve got people in my company who have never used IaC who are configuring Spacelift in less than a day and actually starting to do deployments with no real hand-holding."Go to case study
- “Spacelift is by far the best tool we have found — it enabled us to implement our CI/CD strategy for IaC far quicker and with more control than we had previously thought possible."Go to case study
- “It’s much easier for the developers to synchronize releases between the infrastructure code and the developer code because Spacelift manages the steps to do that, by default or via policy.”Go to case study
Book a technical demo and see Spacelift in action.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the core difference between Spacelift and Terraform Enterprise?
Spacelift orchestrates IaC workflows in a flexible CI-style model across multiple tools. Terraform Enterprise is a tightly integrated, Terraform-first platform with built-in policy, governance, and state controls. In short, Spacelift is a versatile automation layer for multi-tool, multi-cloud pipelines, while Terraform Enterprise centers on a controlled Terraform environment.
How does pricing differ between Spacelift and Terraform Enterprise?
Spacelift Enterprise uses predictable, worker-based pricing with unlimited users in SaaS or self-hosted setups. You size for concurrency, not for every resource. Terraform Enterprise is custom quoted and often tied to resource or workspace scale, so costs can rise as your footprint grows.
Does Spacelift replace Terraform Enterprise or work alongside it?
Spacelift can replace Terraform Enterprise for most teams. It covers policy enforcement, access control, state management, and VCS integration, and it works directly with Terraform CLI. Some orgs still run both during migration or for isolated use cases. Note that Terraform Enterprise also supports policy enforcement with Sentinel and OPA, which you can mirror in Spacelift with OPA.
How hard is it to migrate from Terraform Enterprise to Spacelift?
Terraform configurations (HCL code) typically require minimal changes, as Spacelift uses Terraform code usually needs little to no change. Typical steps are to reconnect your VCS, map or recreate workspaces, import existing Terraform state, and re-implement policies in OPA if you previously used Sentinel. Spacelift provides OPA policy support and examples to speed this up.
How do deployment and scaling options differ between Spacelift and TFE?
Spacelift runs as SaaS or in your cloud with private workers, so you scale by adding workers to match workloads and regions. It is cloud agnostic and fits cleanly into private networks with minimal change.
Terraform Enterprise offers SaaS or a private install that is heavier to run, often needing clusters plus external PostgreSQL and object storage. Scaling usually means more nodes and more ops overhead, so hybrid and multi cloud teams tend to scale faster on Spacelift.
Is there a SaaS and self-hosted option of Spacelift?
Yes. Spacelift offers a hosted SaaS service and a self-hosted deployment that is available on the Enterprise tier. You can also run private workers in your own environment when you need stricter control.
Does Spacelift support multi-cloud and multi-tool workflows?
Yes. Spacelift integrates with Terraform, OpenTofu, Pulumi, Kubernetes and others, and manages infrastructure across major clouds like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.