# Crossplane alternatives: what AI models name instead, October 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, October 2026 Edition. 225 of the 252 answers in the 1 category where Crossplane holds a standing named it neither first nor as an alternative; these are the first choices those answers made. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/vendors/crossplane/alternatives/

## Named instead, most often (every category and segment added)

- Terraform: 122
- OpenTofu: 70
- Pulumi: 15
- Ansible: 9
- Terraform/OpenTofu: 8
- AWS CloudFormation: 4

## Infrastructure as code

**Small business**: 82 of 84 answers did not name Crossplane (Crossplane is #8 of 10 at 0%).

- Terraform: first choice in 54 of those 82
- OpenTofu: first choice in 34 of those 82
- Pulumi: first choice in 9 of those 82
- Ansible: first choice in 5 of those 82
- Terraform/OpenTofu: first choice in 4 of those 82
- AWS CloudFormation: first choice in 1 of those 82
- Terraform using HCP Terraform's Free plan: first choice in 1 of those 82

**Mid-market**: 71 of 84 answers did not name Crossplane (Crossplane is #8 of 12 at 0%).

- Terraform: first choice in 35 of those 71
- OpenTofu: first choice in 24 of those 71
- Ansible: first choice in 4 of those 71
- Terraform with HCP Terraform: first choice in 2 of those 71
- Pulumi: first choice in 1 of those 71
- Terraform/OpenTofu: first choice in 1 of those 71

**Enterprise**: 72 of 84 answers did not name Crossplane (Crossplane is #8 of 13 at 0%).

- Terraform: first choice in 33 of those 72
- OpenTofu: first choice in 12 of those 72
- Pulumi: first choice in 5 of those 72
- AWS CloudFormation: first choice in 3 of those 72
- Spacelift: first choice in 3 of those 72
- Terraform/OpenTofu: first choice in 3 of those 72
- AWS CDK: first choice in 1 of those 72
- Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform: first choice in 1 of those 72

Published under CC BY 4.0. The output is the models' output; nothing here is a recommendation by the index.