# Terraform vs OpenTofu: which do AI models recommend for iac, October 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition, Infrastructure as code. Eleven of fourteen models named Terraform first on the direct prompt; four named OpenTofu. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/cloud/infrastructure-as-code/terraform-vs-opentofu/

| | First-choice share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Models naming it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terraform | 57% | #1 of 12 | 24% | 85 | 14 of 14 |
| OpenTofu | 35% | #2 of 12 | 0% | 54 | 14 of 14 |

## The direct prompt, model by model

- DeepSeek V4 Flash: both first (first choices: OpenTofu, Terraform) (alternatives: Pulumi)
- Muse Glimmer 30B: both first (first choices: OpenTofu, Terraform) (alternatives: AWS CDK, AWS CloudFormation, Atlantis, Pulumi, Spacelift)
- Claude Haiku 4.5: terraform first (first choices: Terraform) (alternatives: AWS CDK, AWS CloudFormation)
- Perplexity Sonar: terraform first (first choices: Terraform) (alternatives: AWS CDK, AWS CloudFormation, OpenTofu, Pulumi)
- Grok 4.20: terraform first (first choices: Terraform) (alternatives: AWS CloudFormation, Ansible, OpenTofu, Pulumi)
- Mistral Small: terraform first (first choices: Terraform) (alternatives: Crossplane, Pulumi)
- Llama 4 Maverick: terraform first (first choices: Terraform) (alternatives: AWS CDK, Crossplane, Pulumi)
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: terraform first (first choices: Terraform) (alternatives: OpenTofu, Pulumi)
- Kimi K2: terraform first (first choices: Terraform) (alternatives: AWS CDK, Crossplane, Pulumi)
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: terraform first (first choices: Terraform) (alternatives: AWS CloudFormation, OpenTofu, Pulumi)
- MiniMax M2.5: terraform first (first choices: Terraform) (alternatives: AWS CloudFormation, Ansible, Pulumi)
- GPT-5.4 mini: opentofu first (first choices: OpenTofu) (alternatives: Azure Bicep, CloudFormation/CDK, Pulumi, Terraform)
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: opentofu first (first choices: OpenTofu) (alternatives: Pulumi, Scalr, Spacelift, env0)
- GPT-6 Luna: neither first, one named (first choices: Terraform with HCP Terraform) (alternatives: AWS CDK, OpenTofu, Pulumi)

## What the models said about Terraform

- "Multi-cloud IaC | OpenTofu (not Terraform)" (Kimi K2, negative prompt, hard negative)
- "Unlike Terraform's HCP Terraform (which has a free tier limited to 500 managed resources and charges ~$0.10/resource/month beyond that)" (Grok 4.20, budget prompt, soft negative)
- "be cautious if you need a fully permissive open-source stack or want to minimize licensing risk. HashiCorp moved Terraform to BUSL" (GPT-5.4 mini, negative prompt, soft negative)
- "Terraform remains the default for multi‑cloud ops teams, with the deepest tooling and IBM backing, but the BSL license restricts commercial productization." (GLM 4.7 FlashX, comparative prompt, first choice)
- "*Look at:* HashiCorp Terraform. It is the resume-standard skill... the ecosystem (modules, providers, integrations) is unmatched." (Qwen 3.7 Flash, scale prompt, first choice)
- "the most common, low risk choice today is Terraform / OpenTofu for multi-cloud provisioning, with a remote state backend" (Muse Glimmer 30B, paraphrase prompt, first choice)

## What the models said about OpenTofu

- "Use OpenTofu as your primary provisioning tool — it's free, open source, and fully compatible with the massive Terraform ecosystem." (DeepSeek V4 Flash, budget prompt, first choice)
- "write your code in standard HCL (which is fully compatible with both OpenTofu and Terraform). This keeps your options open." (Gemini 3.5 Flash, scale prompt, first choice)
- "I'd recommend starting with OpenTofu (or Terraform if you prefer HashiCorp's support and don't mind the BSL license)" (DeepSeek V4 Flash, paraphrase prompt, first choice)

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts over all fourteen models, for a mid-market B2B company; rank is within the category. Comparisons are drawn for the top eight products in each category. Published under CC BY 4.0; the output is the models' output, and nothing here is a recommendation by the index.