Master Spacelift with our step-by-step tutorial, detailed feature walkthrough, and expert tips.
Sign up for a free account at spacelift.io and connect your VCS provider (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket) Create your first stack by selecting a repository with Terraform/IaC code Configure your stack settings, run a plan, and review the proposed changes before applying
💡 Quick Start: Follow these 1 steps in order to get up and running with Spacelift quickly.
Explore the key features that make Spacelift powerful for cloud infrastructure workflows.
Revolutionary Manage Terraform, OpenTofu, Terragrunt, Pulumi, Ansible, Kubernetes, and CloudFormation stacks from a single platform. Stack dependencies let you chain workflows across different tools — a Terraform stack can trigger an Ansible playbook that configures the resources it just created.
A platform team running Terraform for cloud infrastructure and Ansible for server configuration, with automatic Ansible runs triggered whenever Terraform creates new instances.
Revolutionary Write policies in Open Policy Agent (OPA) Rego language to enforce guardrails on infrastructure changes. Plan policies evaluate before apply, approval policies control who can approve, and trigger policies determine when stacks auto-deploy.
Blocking any Terraform plan that creates an S3 bucket without encryption enabled, or requiring VP approval for changes that affect production databases.
Revolutionary Spacelift periodically checks whether your actual cloud state matches your declared state and alerts you when someone has made manual changes. Available from Starter+ tier. Can be configured to auto-remediate or just notify.
Catching when a developer manually changed a security group rule through the AWS console instead of updating Terraform, and automatically reverting the change.
Revolutionary Run Spacelift workers inside your own VPC for security and compliance. Private workers connect outbound to Spacelift's control plane — no inbound firewall rules required. Essential for organizations that can't allow infrastructure state to traverse public networks.
A financial services company running IaC operations inside their private network while still using Spacelift's orchestration and UI.
Revolutionary Standardized infrastructure templates that non-IaC-specialists can deploy through a form-based UI. Platform engineers create blueprints; developers consume them without needing to write Terraform.
A platform team creating a 'production microservice' blueprint that developers use to spin up a standardized ECS service with load balancer, auto-scaling, and monitoring — without touching a .tf file.
Terraform Cloud charges per managed resource (the RUM model), so your bill grows linearly with your infrastructure size. Spacelift charges per concurrent worker, so your bill scales with how many simultaneous runs you need. For large infrastructure estates (5,000+ resources), Spacelift can be 3-5x cheaper. For small setups, the difference is less significant.
Yes. Spacelift added first-class OpenTofu support and actively positions itself as the leading orchestration platform for OpenTofu. If you're migrating away from HashiCorp's BSL-licensed Terraform, Spacelift is one of the smoothest paths.
If your infrastructure state contains sensitive data (database credentials, network configurations, etc.) and your security team won't allow it to transit public infrastructure, yes. Public workers run in Spacelift's shared pool with container isolation. Private workers run in your own VPC. Most startups are fine with public workers; regulated industries typically need private.
Enterprise plan only. Spacelift can be deployed entirely within your infrastructure. This is important for air-gapped environments or organizations with strict data sovereignty requirements.
Spacelift raised $51M to expand the platform, particularly around multi-IaC support and enterprise features. The funding signals strong market confidence, but it also means the company needs to grow revenue — watch for pricing changes as they scale.
Now that you know how to use Spacelift, it's time to put this knowledge into practice.
Sign up and follow the tutorial steps
Check pros, cons, and user feedback
See how it stacks against alternatives
Follow our tutorial and master this powerful cloud infrastructure tool in minutes.
Tutorial updated March 2026