# Infrastructure as code for enterprise buyers: what AI models recommend, September 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition. Asked as "infrastructure-as-code tool" and as "IaC platform for provisioning cloud resources", six framings each, to twelve models with search on, on behalf of an enterprise B2B company. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-code/enterprise/

**Standing:** Terraform leads with 58% of first choices; verdict clear leader. 57 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Terraform | 58% | 24% | 74 |
| 2 | OpenTofu | 18% | 2% | 44 |
| 3 | Pulumi | 12% | 17% | 65 |
| 4 | Spacelift | 7% | 0% | 26 |
| 5 | env0 | 2% | 0% | 13 |
| 6 | Puppet | 2% | 62% | 13 |
| 7 | Crossplane | 0% | 0% | 26 |
| 8 | AWS CDK | 0% | 0% | 18 |
| 9 | AWS CloudFormation | 0% | 27% | 44 |
| 10 | Scalr | 0% | 0% | 12 |
| 11 | Azure Bicep | 0% | 27% | 15 |
| 12 | Ansible | 0% | 38% | 24 |

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: Terraform; alternatives AWS CloudFormation, Pulumi
- GPT-5.4 mini: Terraform/OpenTofu; alternatives AWS CDK, AWS CloudFormation, Pulumi
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: OpenTofu, Pulumi; alternatives Crossplane, Terraform
- Perplexity Sonar: Terraform; alternatives AWS CDK, AWS CloudFormation, OpenTofu, Pulumi
- Grok 4.1 Fast: Terraform; alternatives AWS CDK, Crossplane, OpenTofu, Pulumi
- Mistral Small: OpenTofu, Terraform; alternatives AWS CDK, Crossplane, Pulumi
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: Terraform; alternatives AWS CloudFormation, OpenTofu, Pulumi
- Llama 4 Maverick: Puppet
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Terraform; alternatives AWS CloudFormation, Pulumi
- Kimi K2: OpenTofu, Terraform; alternatives Pulumi
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Terraform; alternatives AWS CloudFormation, Pulumi
- MiniMax M2.5: Terraform; alternatives AWS CloudFormation, Pulumi

## Sources the answers cite

59 of 72 answers came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- pulumi.com: 35 answers, 73 citations
- apiiro.com: 31 answers, 31 citations
- spacelift.io: 27 answers, 48 citations
- guideflow.com: 25 answers, 25 citations
- firefly.ai: 20 answers, 24 citations
- cortex.io: 17 answers, 17 citations
- checkthat.ai: 16 answers, 18 citations
- hashicorp.com: 15 answers, 28 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://apiiro.com/blog/best-iac-tools (31 answers)
- https://pulumi.com/blog/infrastructure-as-code-tools (28 answers)
- https://guideflow.com/blog/infrastructure-as-code-tools (25 answers)
- https://cortex.io/post/best-infrastructure-as-code-iac-tools (17 answers)
- https://spacelift.io/blog/infrastructure-as-code-tools (15 answers)
- https://checkthat.ai/answers/what-are-the-best-infrastructure-as-code-tools (13 answers)
- https://computingforgeeks.com/best-infrastructure-as-code-iac-cloud-automation-tools (12 answers)
- https://cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com/tools/best-iac-tools/126145308 (11 answers)
- https://facets.cloud/blog/top-8-infrastructure-as-code-iac-tools (10 answers)
- https://devopstraininginstitute.com/blog/12-infrastructure-as-code-tools-ranked-for-devops (9 answers)

## Warned against

- AWS CloudFormation: 12 of 44 labels negative. "Tools to Avoid or Be Highly Cautious About: CloudFormation (AWS-native): ... Severe vendor lock-in to AWS" (Grok 4.1 Fast, negative prompt)
- Terraform: 18 of 74 labels negative. "Terraform's 2023 licensing change to BUSL-1.1 (no longer open source) and inherent limitations with domain-specific languages create challenges" (Claude Haiku 4.5, negative prompt)
- Pulumi: 11 of 65 labels negative. "reliance on their hosted state backend introduces a different kind of lock-in ... Pulumi remains a strong choice if implemented correctly with self-managed backends." (Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt)
- Chef: 8 of 12 labels negative. "Configuration Management Tools Used *for* Provisioning (e.g., Ansible, Puppet, Chef)... is an anti-pattern." (Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://it-ai-index.com/methodology/
- Raw judge labels and full responses: https://it-ai-index.com/data/
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition, it-ai-index.com.