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HCP Terraform vs Stategraph

HCP Terraform locks a workspace for each run and bills you for every resource, every hour. Stategraph locks the resources a change touches, plans only that change, and charges a flat price.

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Teams running Terraform on Stategraph

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How Stategraph is better

1. Plan time

A plan reads only your change

HCP Terraform refreshes the whole workspace on every run. Stategraph plans the part of the graph your change reaches.

Faster plan & apply →

No-op plan on a real 800 MB production state.

terraform plan

3+ hours

Refreshes every resource

stategraph plan

97 seconds

Walks only the change

One benchmark. Results vary with the shape of the state.

2. Concurrency

Locks on resources, not the workspace

An HCP Terraform run locks the workspace until it finishes. Stategraph locks the resources a change touches, so changes that do not overlap apply at the same time.

Learn about parallel applies →

HCP Terraform, one workspace

workspace run queue

✓ run #128: applied (0:04) ⏸ run #129: pending, workspace locked ⏸ run #130: pending ⏸ run #131: pending ⏱ 12m elapsed · 3 runs waiting

Stategraph, one state

resource locks

✓ tx #128: applied (0:04) ✓ tx #129: applied (0:04) ✓ tx #130: applied (0:05) ✓ tx #131: applied (0:05) ⏱ 5s elapsed · 0 waiting

Illustrative: four changes to different resources in one root module.

3. Changes across states

Producer and consumer in one plan

In HCP Terraform, apply the producer first, then a run trigger plans the consumer. Stategraph plans both together and commits both states in one transaction.

Multi-state transactions →

stategraph · cross-state plan

# edit rm1 only: http_proxy_port 8080 → 9090 ❯ stategraph plan State 0 · rm1 (producer) ~ terraform_data.http_proxy_port input: 8080 → 9090 ~ output.http_proxy_port: 8080 → 9090 State 1 · rm2 (consumer, reads rm1's pending output) ~ terraform_data.firewall_rule_port_min input: 8070 → 9080 Plan: 0 to add, 2 to change, 0 to destroy ✓ across 2 states, one plan, one apply

Real output. Same terraform_remote_state HCL.

4. Price

A flat price, not a meter

HCP Terraform bills per managed resource per hour. Stategraph Orchestration is $12,000 a year at any resource count, with unlimited users, runs, and concurrency.

Stategraph pricing →

List price per month, by managed resources

HCP Terraform EssentialsStategraph Pro

$500

$1,000

5,000

$1,000

10,000

$2,500

$1,000

25,000

$5,000

$1,000

50,000

HCP Terraform Essentials at its list price of $0.10 per resource per month, from hashicorp.com, 2026-09-16. Standard ($0.47) and Premium ($0.99) cost more. Stategraph Pro is $12,000 a year, billed annually.

Side by side

HCP Terraform vs Stategraph: Key differences

Capability	Stategraph	HCP Terraform
Plan scope	✓Only what the change reaches	✗The whole workspace, every run
Lock scope	✓The resources a change touches	✗The workspace, for the life of the run
Concurrency	✓Unlimited	✗1 run on Free, 3 on Essentials, 10 on Standard
A change across states	✓One plan, one transaction	●Run triggers after the upstream apply, or Stacks, billed per resource
Query your infrastructure	✓SQL across every resource and state	●Explorer filters workspace metadata only
Drift detection	✓On every plan, hourly to monthly	●Health assessments on Standard and Premium
Policy	✓OPA, Conftest, and Checkov, on every plan	●Sentinel and OPA. Policy sets in VCS start on Standard
Pricing unit	✓Flat. $12,000 a year, no limits	✗Every managed resource, every hour
Running it yourself	✓The same product, self-hosted, BYOC, or air-gapped	●Terraform Enterprise, a separate distribution

HCP Terraform facts from developer.hashicorp.com and hashicorp.com, 2026-09-16.

Same HCL, new commands

How to switch

from HCP Terraform to Stategraph

# 1. Pull the current state of a workspace ❯ terraform state pull > terraform.tfstate # 2. Import the state and its HCL. Modules and providers do not change. ❯ stategraph import tf # 3. Point your CI or Orchestration at two commands ❯ stategraph plan ❯ stategraph apply # To leave: write a state file back at any time ❯ stategraph states export

“We wanted to keep everything in the pull request flow. Stategraph gave us everything we needed, and it was significantly cheaper.”

Security Engineer at Zip, after evaluating Atlantis, Spacelift, and Terraform Cloud · 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.

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