Atlantis vs Stategraph
Stategraph, the Atlantis alternative, runs in your CI with your credentials, locks only the resources a change touches, and adds drift, policy, cost, and SQL.
Teams running Terraform on Stategraph
How Stategraph is better
1. Credentials and locks
Your CI, your credentials, resource locks
One Atlantis server holds your cloud credentials and locks a project until the pull request merges. Stategraph runs in your CI with your credentials and locks only the resources a change touches.
Learn about parallel applies →Illustrative: four pull requests touching disjoint resources in the same root module.
2. Governance
Drift, policy, cost, and approvals built in
Atlantis checks approved, mergeable, and undiverged, and leaves drift and cost to external tooling. Stategraph Orchestration has drift detection, policy gates, cost in the plan, and per-directory approvals built in, on the Free plan.
Discover Orchestration →Illustrative: one pull request in each. Orchestration Free: 3 users, 50 runs a month, 1 concurrent worker.
3. Queryable state
Query your infrastructure with SQL
Atlantis never looks inside your state, a JSON file in a bucket. Stategraph parses it into PostgreSQL, so inventory, blast radius, cost, and history are SQL.
How you can query state →Real output captured from a live Stategraph instance, not a mockup.
Side by side
Atlantis vs Stategraph: Key differences
| Capability | Stategraph | Atlantis |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs Terraform | ✓Your CI, with your credentials. The server never sees your cloud | ✗The Atlantis server, with cloud credentials in its environment |
| Lock scope | ✓The resources a change touches | ✗The project, held until the pull request merges |
| Plan scope | ✓Only what the change reaches | ✗The whole root module, every run |
| A change across states | ✓One plan, one transaction | ✗Sequential applies you sequence yourself |
| Query your infrastructure | ✓SQL across every resource and state | ✗Not available |
| Drift detection | ✓Scheduled, tag-scoped, in a maintenance window | ✗External tooling |
| Cost | ✓Delta in the plan, thresholds in the pull request | ✗External tooling |
| Approvals | ✓Per directory: team approvals, CODEOWNERS routing, required checks | ●Approved, mergeable, undiverged |
| Policy | ✓OPA, Conftest, and Checkov gates, with a named override a person approves | ●Conftest policy sets, configured server side |
| Price | ●Free to 3 users and 50 runs a month. Pro $12,000 a year, no limits | ✓Free |
Governance rows are Stategraph Orchestration.
Same HCL, new commands
How to switch
Keep Atlantis and put Stategraph under it with two run steps in a custom workflow, or replace it with Orchestration. Atlantis integration guide →
“Stategraph has been a game-changer for us. Transitioning from Atlantis was smooth, and the support from their team was exceptional. We now have more confidence in our deployments, better security, and an overall improved workflow.”
Marko Kuljanski, Engineering at Patients Know Best · Read the case study →FAQ
Common questions
Try it with your own state
Import a state file and run your first plan in under 30 minutes. Pro is free for 30 days, no credit card.