A Controlled Comparative Evaluation of Infrastructure as Code Tools: Deployment Performance and Maintainability Across Terraform, Pulumi, and AWS CloudFormation

Abstract

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) underpins automated cloud provisioning in modern DevOps environments; however, controlled comparative evaluations of leading IaC tools under identical conditions remain limited. This study presents a controlled comparative evaluation of Terraform, Pulumi, and AWS CloudFormation within a standardized Amazon Web Services environment. An identical multi-tier architecture was implemented using each tool, and repeated deployment cycles were conducted to observe differences in provisioning duration, removal time, structural maintainability, and operational characteristics. Descriptive statistical analysis across 30 controlled repetitions indicates that Terraform and Pulumi achieve comparable deployment performance, whereas CloudFormation requires more than twice the average provisioning time under the conditions evaluated. Removal durations were similar across tools but remained longest for CloudFormation. Structural analysis reveals trade-offs between declarative modular design, programmatic flexibility, and native cloud integration. The study provides a controlled, comparative framework to support evidence-based selection of IaC tools in production-oriented cloud environments.