# HCP Terraform

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/iac/hcp-terraform/

HashiCorp's managed Terraform platform, billed on the number of resources it holds under management, charged by the hour.

## Who it suits

Running the reference implementation with a bill that starts at nothing and then tracks inventory: 500 managed resources free, and $0.0001359 per resource per hour after that with no plan fee to clear first.

Consider something else if Your infrastructure churns. Billing follows the peak resource count within each hour, so a preview environment built and destroyed inside that hour is charged as though it had run the whole time — Scalr's per-run price and Spacelift's per-worker price both leave ephemeral estates alone.

## iScore

95 / 100 (80% interval 91–100), rank 2 of 5 in iac — interval overlaps the next rank, so this is an ordering, not a finding.

inetGeek's own reading, computed from sourced facts against category peers by disclosed rules. Not a provider claim. Intervals are 80%; a provider with few documented facts is pulled toward the category middle rather than scored on what little is known.
Method: https://inetgeek.com/iscore/. Full output with every criterion's basis: https://inetgeek.com/scores.json. Every iac peer ranked: https://inetgeek.com/iac/hcp-terraform/alternatives/

- Price: 100 (94–100), weight 36%, 1 of 1 criteria scored
- Capabilities: 88 (81–94), weight 29%, 1 of 1 criteria scored
- Trust and compliance: 95 (66–100), weight 21%, 1 of 2 criteria scored; scored for peers, not here — undocumented or stated without a number or a yes/limited/no: audit_logs
- Evidence: 100 (100–100), weight 14%, 4 of 4 criteria scored

## What the documentation says

### Pricing

- Free tier: Yes ([source](https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/cloud-docs/overview/manage-plan), read 2026-09-15)
- What the free plan includes: 500 managed resources. The cap is stated as a condition of downgrading rather than as a description of the plan — an organisation above it cannot move down to free — and the documentation names no other free allowance, so runs, users and concurrency are not known to be capped from this page. ([source](https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/cloud-docs/overview/manage-plan), read 2026-09-15)
- Entry paid plan: $0.0001359 per managed resource per hour on the Essentials plan, with no monthly plan fee to clear first. HashiCorp's own worked example is 1,000 resources held continuously for a month, which it totals at $97.85. ([source](https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/cloud-docs/overview/estimate-cost), read 2026-09-15)
- Pricing model: Per managed resource, per hour. The charge follows the peak resource count within each hour, so resources created and destroyed inside one hour are still billed for it: HashiCorp's own example bills an hour at a peak of 2,000 after 1,000 were added and 500 destroyed. Contract plans are offered at lower rates for larger organisations. ([source](https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/cloud-docs/overview/estimate-cost), read 2026-09-15)

### Observability

- Self-hostable: Supported — As Terraform Enterprise, a separate self-hosted distribution of the same application ([source](https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/enterprise), read 2026-09-15)

### Auth

- SAML single sign-on: Supported — SAML 2.0, both SP- and IdP-initiated, with just-in-time provisioning ([source](https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/cloud-docs/users-teams-organizations/single-sign-on/saml), read 2026-09-15)
- Audit logs: Yes, on the Standard and Premium editions, with 14 days of retention, read through a dedicated Audit Trails API that needs an organisation or audit trail token rather than a user token. The documentation disagrees with itself on the tier: the audit trails reference says Standard and Premium, while the plan-management page lists audit logging among Premium-only features. Recorded as the audit page states it. Not available on self-hosted Terraform Enterprise. ([source](https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/cloud-docs/api-docs/audit-trails), read 2026-09-15)

## Compared with

- [HCP Terraform vs Pulumi](https://inetgeek.com/compare/hcp-terraform-vs-pulumi/)
- [HCP Terraform vs Spacelift](https://inetgeek.com/compare/hcp-terraform-vs-spacelift/)
- [HCP Terraform vs Scalr](https://inetgeek.com/compare/hcp-terraform-vs-scalr/)