AWS CDK vs Terraform: the honest comparison in 2025

AWS CDK vs Terraform: the honest comparison in 2025 What they are Terraform : Declarative HCL. Provider-agnostic (AWS + GCP + Azure + Kubernetes). CDK : TypeScript/Python/Java that generates CloudFormation. AWS-only. Core tradeoff Terraform: + Explicit, readable HCL — easy to review PRs + Provider-agnostic — same tooling for everything + Mature ecosystem, large module registry - Dynamic logic is verbose (count, for_each) CDK: + Real programming languages with loops and classes + L2/L3 constructs hide AWS complexity behind good defaults + Unit testing with standard frameworks - AWS-only - Generated CloudFormation = thousands of lines, hard to debug CDK L2 constructs (where it shines) const service = new ecs_patterns . ApplicationLoadBalancedFargateService ( this , ' Svc ' , { cluster , cpu : 256 , memoryLimitMiB : 512 , taskImageOptions : { image : ecs . ContainerImage . fromEcrRepository ( repo ), containerPort : 8080 } // ALB + target group + security groups created automatically });