Scalr
Terraform Cloud alternative for infrastructure
Atlantis
Automate Terraform pull‑request workflows with self‑hosted execution
Atlantis listens to Terraform pull‑request webhooks, runs plan, import and apply remotely, and posts results back to the PR, giving teams visibility and a standardized workflow.
Overview
Overview
Atlantis is a self‑hosted Go application that integrates directly with your version‑control system via webhooks. When a Terraform pull request is opened or updated, Atlantis automatically runs terraform plan, terraform import, or terraform apply in a secure, isolated environment and posts the output as a comment on the pull request.
Who Benefits
The tool is aimed at engineering and DevOps teams that manage infrastructure as code with Terraform and want a collaborative, audit‑ready workflow. By centralising Terraform execution, it removes the need for each contributor to have local credentials, while providing a single source of truth for plan results.
Deployment
Atlantis can be run as a binary or containerised service (Dockerfile included) on any infrastructure you control—bare‑metal, virtual machines, or orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes. Configuration is driven by a simple YAML file and webhook settings for your VCS provider.
Highlights
Listens for Terraform pull‑request webhooks
Runs plan, import, and apply remotely
Posts execution results back to the PR
Standardises Terraform workflows across teams
Pros
- Provides a single, auditable view of Terraform changes
- Enables non‑operations engineers to contribute safely
- Reduces manual CLI steps in the PR process
- Self‑hosted control over execution environment
Considerations
- Requires infrastructure to host and maintain the service
- Initial webhook and configuration setup can be complex
- Adds an extra network hop that may increase latency
- Scaling for very large organisations may need additional effort
Managed products teams compare with
When teams consider Atlantis, these hosted platforms usually appear on the same shortlist.
Looking for a hosted option? These are the services engineering teams benchmark against before choosing open source.
Fit guide
Great for
- Teams using Terraform with a pull‑request based workflow
- Organizations that need an audit trail for infrastructure changes
- Small to medium engineering groups seeking workflow standardisation
- CI/CD pipelines that want automated Terraform execution
Not ideal when
- Projects without a pull‑request based development model
- Teams preferring a fully managed SaaS solution
- Very large enterprises requiring multi‑tenant, high‑scale hosting
- Environments where adding another self‑hosted service is prohibited
How teams use it
Automated plan on PR creation
Reviewers see a detailed Terraform plan comment directly in the pull request
Apply on merge
Infrastructure is automatically updated when the pull request is merged, reducing manual steps
Import existing resources via PR
Legacy infrastructure can be brought under Terraform management without local credential exposure
Secure Terraform execution for developers
Developers trigger runs without storing cloud credentials on their machines
Tech snapshot
Go97%
CSS1%
Dockerfile1%
TypeScript1%
Shell1%
HCL1%
Frequently asked questions
Which version‑control systems does Atlantis support?
Atlantis works with any system that can send webhooks for pull‑request events, such as GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket.
How can I deploy Atlantis?
You can run the compiled binary directly or use the provided Docker image; both can be orchestrated on VMs or Kubernetes.
Is my cloud credential information safe?
Credentials are stored only on the host running Atlantis and are never exposed to pull‑request contributors.
Can I customise the Terraform commands Atlantis runs?
Yes, the configuration file lets you enable or disable plan, apply, and import, and you can add custom workflow steps.
What resources are needed to run Atlantis at scale?
Scaling typically involves provisioning additional compute resources and configuring load balancing; the core service itself remains lightweight.
Project at a glance
Active- Stars
- 8,781
- Watchers
- 8,781
- Forks
- 1,212
LicenseApache-2.0
Repo age7 years old
Last commit11 hours ago
Primary languageGo
Last synced 3 hours ago