Every category where a model named Terraform for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Infrastructure as code	Cloud and infrastructure	46%	1 of 46	20%	70	endorsed leader

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Terraform yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Terraform across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	4	0	1	1	6
GPT-5.4 mini	2	1	1	0	4
Gemini 3.5 Flash	1	3	0	4	8
Perplexity Sonar	3	1	0	0	4
Grok 4.1 Fast	5	0	0	1	6
Mistral Small	4	1	1	0	6
DeepSeek V4 Flash	3	1	0	2	6
Llama 4 Maverick	2	1	2	0	5
Qwen 3.7 Flash	5	0	0	1	6
Kimi K2	3	1	0	2	6
GLM 4.7 FlashX	3	1	1	1	6
MiniMax M2.5	3	1	1	2	7

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct34 labels27

Paraphrase42 labels30

Comparative34 labels29not counted in share

Budget-constrained41 labels12

Scale-constrained36 labels20

Negative33 labels8not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative220 labels in all, every segment counted; 89 of the 126 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Terraform is often the safest choice for mid-market companies because it offers flexibility, a mature ecosystem, strong community support, and cloud-agnostic capabilities” Claude Haiku 4.5 · IaC · direct prompt · first choice

“For most mid-sized B2B companies, Terraform is the safest and most flexible choice due to its maturity, multi-cloud support, and extensive ecosystem.” Mistral Small · IaC · paraphrase prompt · first choice

“For a typical mid-market B2B company, I'd usually start with Terraform — or OpenTofu if you want an open-source, community-governed alternative.” GPT-5.4 mini · IaC · direct prompt · first choice

“It is considered the industry benchmark for IaC tools and offers declarative provisioning across all major clouds and on-prem environments.” Llama 4 Maverick · IaC · paraphrase prompt · first choice

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“Avoid starting new projects with: 1. Terraform under BSL (use OpenTofu instead)” Kimi K2 · IaC · negative prompt · hard negative

“HashiCorp changed Terraform’s license from the open-source MPL 2.0 to the restrictive Business Source License (BSL)... raises long-term concerns about price hikes” Qwen 3.7 Flash · IaC · negative prompt · soft 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 · IaC · negative prompt · soft negative

“To avoid paying for expensive SaaS management platforms (like Terraform Cloud or Spacelift), self-manage your state files” Gemini 3.5 Flash · IaC · budget prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Terraform, over the 201 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Terraform was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Pulumi180 of 2019Compare →

OpenTofu134 of 20141Compare →

AWS CloudFormation123 of 2010Not in the top three

Ansible99 of 2014Not in the top three

AWS CDK76 of 2010Not in the top three

Crossplane65 of 2010Not in the top three

Puppet48 of 2011Not in the top three

Azure Bicep45 of 2010Not in the top three

Spacelift41 of 2013Not in the top three

Azure Resource Manager templates37 of 2010Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Terraform. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 145 of the 201 answers that named Terraform and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

pulumi.com91

apiiro.com82

spacelift.io67

guideflow.com64

cortex.io56

checkthat.ai53

toolradar.com40

firefly.ai38

devtoollab.com37

devopsplatforms.com34

562 of the 562 domain citations in answers naming Terraform came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

apiiro.com/blog/best-iac-tools82

pulumi.com/blog/infrastructure-as-code-tools76

guideflow.com/blog/infrastructure-as-code-tools64

cortex.io/post/best-infrastructure-as-code-iac-tools56

checkthat.ai/answers/what-are-the-best-infrastructure-as-code-tools50

spacelift.io/blog/infrastructure-as-code-tools43

devtoollab.com/blog/best-infrastructure-as-code-tools37

computingforgeeks.com/best-infrastructure-as-code-iac-cloud-automation-tools30

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Terraform

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as Terraform; a claim can dispute any of them.

HCP Terraform 3Terraform Cloud 2HashiCorp Terraform 1HashiCorp Terraform Cloud (or Terraform Enterprise) 1Terraform (HCL) 1Terraform (HashiCorp) 1Terraform (by HashiCorp) 1Terraform (specifically the open-source OpenTofu) 1

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Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Terraform's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Terraform, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at terra.security is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.