By Sebastian Stadil — 21 May 2025

Terraform Cloud vs. Spacelift: A Matter-of-Fact Pricing Breakdown

Choosing the right Infrastructure as Code (IaC) management platform is a critical decision. Beyond features and integrations, the pricing model can significantly impact your operational costs and budget predictability. This post provides a matter-of-fact comparison of the pricing structures for three prominent players: HashiCorp Terraform Cloud, Spacelift, and Scalr.

We'll delve into their respective pricing models, the metrics they use for billing, their overall pricing approach, and the details of their available tiers.

HashiCorp Terraform Cloud (TFC)

Terraform Cloud is HashiCorp's managed service offering for Terraform.

Pricing Model: Primarily Resources Under Management (RUM).
Pricing Metric: The number of resources managed by Terraform Cloud, billed on an hourly basis for paid tiers.
Overall Pricing Approach & Tiers:
- Free Tier: Suitable for small projects and individuals. It includes:
  - Up to 500 resources under management (RUM).
  - 1 concurrent run.
  - Limited policy sets and run tasks.
  - No audit logs beyond basic events.
  - Basic team management features.
- Standard Tier: Aimed at teams adopting IaC.
  - Pricing is approximately $0.00014 per hour per resource (RUM model).
  - Includes features beyond the Free tier, but some advanced capabilities might still be restricted or require add-ons.
- Plus Tier: Designed for larger organizations with more complex needs.
  - Custom pricing (requires contacting sales).
  - Offers advanced security, compliance, and operational features.
Cost Implications:
- The RUM model can lead to unpredictable costs, as the number of managed resources can fluctuate and grow significantly, directly impacting the monthly bill.
- Accessing advanced features such as sophisticated policy enforcement (Sentinel), more concurrent runs, and comprehensive audit logs often necessitates upgrading to higher, custom-priced tiers. This can result in costs escalating into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for organizations requiring these non-basic functionalities.

Spacelift

Spacelift offers a CI/CD platform for IaC with a focus on policy and collaboration.

Pricing Model: Primarily concurrency-based.
Pricing Metric: The number of concurrent runs (tasks being executed simultaneously) and, for some initial paid tiers, user counts.
Overall Pricing Approach & Tiers:
- Free Tier: Designed for individuals and small teams to get started. It typically includes:
  - Up to 2 users.
  - 1 concurrent run.
  - Notably, this tier often includes many core Spacelift features like unlimited policies (OPA), contexts, and hooks.
- Paid Tiers (e.g., Starter, Cloud): These tiers cater to growing teams and larger organizations.
  - Pricing is predictable, often starting around $250-$399 per month for a set number of users (e.g., up to 10 users on some starter plans) and a specific number of concurrent runs (e.g., 2 concurrency).
  - Crucially, Spacelift does not charge based on Resources Under Management (RUM).
  - Higher tiers offer increased concurrency, more private workers, unlimited users, and advanced features.
- Enterprise Tier: For organizations with extensive requirements.
  - Custom pricing (requires contacting sales).
Cost Implications:
- Predictability: Concurrency-based pricing is generally more predictable than RUM, as costs are tied to a pre-defined capacity.
- Challenges with Concurrency (CCY) Based Pricing:
  - Value Alignment: The number of concurrent runs doesn't always directly reflect the true value a customer derives from the platform.
  - Workarounds: Teams might try to work around concurrency limits by queuing runs or batching jobs, which can impact workflow efficiency and developer experience (DX).
  - Revenue Capping: This model can inadvertently cap revenue from heavy users who are adept at minimizing their concurrent run usage.
  - Friction: Limits can create friction if they interfere with how teams ideally want to structure their workflows, especially for teams with "spiky" or unpredictable workload demands who must pay for peak concurrency.
  - Trade-offs: Once a team optimizes its concurrency usage, it might face trade-offs between further enhancing developer experience and controlling costs.
- While some customers value the predictability, others may find the model restrictive. The perception is often a choice between the known cost of concurrency versus the potentially unknown and escalating costs of a RUM model. The indirect effects of forcing workflow changes to fit a concurrency model can also have longer-term impacts on business agility and developer productivity.

Scalr

Scalr is an IaC management platform emphasizing collaboration, governance, and operational efficiency with transparent pricing.

Pricing Model: Run-based.
Pricing Metric: The number of "qualified runs." Scalr defines a qualified run as a Terraform execution (plan and/or apply) that is successful or actionable. Many failed, errored, or non-actionable runs (e.g., scheduled drift detection runs that find no drift, skipped runs) are often not counted or are free.
Overall Pricing Approach & Tiers:
- Free Tier: Exceptionally generous and designed to allow full feature evaluation. It includes:
  - Up to 50 runs per month.
  - All features are included, such as drift detection, audit logs, comprehensive team management, Open Policy Agent (OPA) integration, custom hooks, and more.
  - 2 concurrent runs are standard, with the option for more by using self-hosted agents.
- Business Tier: For teams and organizations with higher usage.
  - Pricing is primarily based on the number of runs consumed. For example, "flex runs" (runs used beyond a prepaid amount) might cost around $0.99 per qualified run.
  - Volume discounts are typically available for annual plans and higher run commitments.
  - No extra costs for users, additional features, or most quota increases (e.g., workspaces, environments).
Cost Implications:
- Transparency and Predictability: The run-based model is designed to be highly transparent. Costs scale directly with actual, valuable usage (actionable runs).
- Cost-Effective: By not charging for many types of non-actionable or failed runs, and by including all features and unlimited users in all tiers (including the free tier), Scalr aims to provide a cost-effective solution that doesn't penalize users for experimentation, errors, or team growth.
- Full Feature Access: The availability of all features in the free tier allows organizations to thoroughly evaluate Scalr's capabilities without financial commitment and ensures that even smaller teams have access to enterprise-grade functionality.

Pricing Model Quick Comparison

Aspect	Terraform Cloud (TFC)	Spacelift	Scalr
Primary Model	Resources Under Management (RUM)	Concurrency-based	Run-based
Key Metric	Per Resource / Per Hour	Concurrent Runs, Users (lower tiers)	Per "Qualified Run"
Free Tier	Yes, limited RUM & features	Yes, limited users & concurrency, core features	Yes, generous runs & all features
Cost Predictability	Potentially Unpredictable as RUM scales	Predictable monthly/annual cost	Transparent & Predictable based on activity
Primary Cost Driver	Number of managed cloud resources	Need for simultaneous operations	Number of actual plan/apply executions
Feature Gating	Advanced features in higher/custom tiers	Many core features in free/lower tiers	All features included in all tiers
User Costs	Implicit in higher tiers / RUM consumption	Per user on some initial paid plans	No per-user cost

Conclusion

The pricing models of Terraform Cloud, Spacelift, and Scalr present distinct approaches to billing for IaC management.

Terraform Cloud's RUM model can be simple to understand initially but carries the risk of unpredictable and potentially high costs as your managed infrastructure footprint grows, with many advanced features locked behind enterprise-level agreements.
Spacelift's concurrency model offers more predictability in billing but introduces potential workflow constraints and may not always align cost with value, requiring payment for peak capacity.
Scalr's run-based model focuses on transparency and value, charging for actionable workspace executions while providing all features and unlimited users across all tiers, making it an attractive option for teams seeking predictable costs tied to actual usage without feature restrictions.

Ultimately, the best choice depends on your organization's specific usage patterns, team size, growth projections, and your tolerance for different cost predictability challenges. Evaluating the free tiers or trials offered by each platform within your own environment is highly recommended to make an informed decision.