Terraform Cloud vs. Spacelift vs. Firefly

The cloud infrastructure management tooling comparison guide

Infrastructure management solutions often promise comprehensive capabilities but deliver little more than enhanced CI/CD pipelines or management interfaces that require constant attention. (But not this time.)

Terraform Cloud, Spacelift, and Firefly approach critical enterprise infrastructure challenges—from resource proliferation to governance—through fundamentally different approaches, with unique implications for your day-to-day efficiency.

But which one actually delivers? Let's get real about what these tools can (and can't) do for your team.

Get started Schedule demo

The technical breakdown: what each platform actually does

Capability

Firefly

Spacelift

Terraform Cloud

IaC languages

Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation, Helm

Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation

Terraform only

Cloud discovery

Continuous, real-time scanning

Manual import

IaC generation

Automated with dependency resolution

None

Drift detection

Automated with dependency resolution

Limited, plan-time only

Plan-time only

Drift remediation

Automated fixes

For Terraform and OpenTofu only

Manual fixes

Governance

Unified across IaC and cloud resources

IaC only

Asset management

Complete inventory with state tracking

Limited to deployed resources

Limited to state files

AI assistance

Context-aware fixes and optimizations

None

Terraform Cloud

When your CI/CD pipeline only speaks Terraform

Let's be real. HashiCorp built an empire on Terraform, and Terraform Cloud is their managed offering. If you're all-in on HCL and never plan to stray, it's… serviceable.

Terraform Cloud is exactly what you'd expect from HashiCorp: great at running Terraform, but arguably uninterested in the broader DevOps lifecycle. Great for small teams who've already tackled the hard parts of their infrastructure automation, but a partial solution —at best— for complex environments.

What Terraform Cloud handles

Terraform execution: solid running of Terraform plans and applies

State management: secure, reliable remote state storage with versioning

Policy guardrails: basic policy checks through Sentinel

Variable management: secure handling of variables across workspaces

What you're still responsible for

Find unmanaged resources: no discovery capabilities to help identify what's not in code

Generate IaC: no assistance turning existing cloud resources into Terraform

Comprehensive drift management: only detects drift during scheduled or manual plan runs

Fix drift issues: no automated remediation — you'll write the fixes manually

Asset inventory: no unified inventory of cloud resources and their state

Spacelift

All about the pipeline, less about the platform

Credit where it's due: Spacelift builds a solid CI/CD experience for infrastructure code. But it's got a massive blind spot. It acts like infrastructure only exists inside Git repos, which we all know isn't true in the real world.

What Spacelift Cloud handles

Pipeline flexibility: highly customizable CI/CD workflows for infrastructure

Multi-IaC support: handles Terraform, Pulumi, and other IaC tools

Policy-as-Code: solid policy enforcement for deployment processes, but lacks policy bundles with pre-built compliance frameworks

Stack management: sophisticated handling of dependencies between stacks

What you're still responsible for

Discovering actual cloud state: no capabilities for scanning your live environment

Generating IaC: no tools to help codify existing infrastructure

Comprehensive resource inventory: no centralized view across your entire infrastructure

Holistic governance: limited ability to enforce policies across both IaC and cloud resources

Unified resource inventory: no centralized view across your entire infrastructure

Firefly

The complete infrastructure automation platform built for cloud reality

Firefly was built for platform engineers who deal with the messy reality of CoudOps (not the idealized GitOps world, where everything is neatly defined in code first).

Firefly is purpose-built for the reality most platform teams face: multi-cloud environments, partial IaC adoption, continuous drift, and the need for governance that doesn’t also slow down developers.

What Firefly actually solves for

Continuous cloud discovery: automatically and continuously scans your cloud providers, identifying all resources: including those created outside of IaC

Automated IaC generation: converts existing resources into proper infrastructure code with best practices applied

Complete drift management: detects both cloud-to-code and code-to-cloud drift in real-time

Intelligent remediation: AI-assisted generation of fixes with automated PR creation

Unified governance: consistent policy enforcement across both your IaC and your actual cloud resources

Comprehensive asset management: one source of truth that tracks the lifecycle and state of all cloud resources

Multi-IaC support: works with Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation, and Kubernetes manifests

Let's talk pricing: what do these tools actually cost?

All these tools cost money, but you won’t always get the same bang for your buck. Here's the real deal on pricing models:

Explore Firefly pricing

Terraform Cloud

Base pricing seems reasonable until you need the enterprise features that actually matter. Expect significant investment for full functionality.

Spacelift

Their stack-based pricing seems straightforward, but it creates weird incentives to minimize stack count — which can lead to questionable architectural decisions.

Firefly

A resource-based pricing approach that correlates directly with delivered value. Expect transparent, predictable costs that scale proportionally with your infrastructure.