Hello, As I try to get started with Pulumi, I am looking for some clarity about needing an account to use the cli commands. Is the cli free like Warp where you just need an account to use the free cli, or am I missing an option in the cli to by pass it for testing? I didn't see it as a requirement in the docs or the help calls, and I could have just missed reading it. It doesn't bother me at all to create an account just curious if I am missing something here.

It's free, you don't need an account. The default

pulumi login

logs you into the app, so you can't use that: you need to use either a backend URL, or the

--local

option. Once you're logged into something that isn't the app, everything else should just work.

As @little-cartoon-10569 already said, you don't need an account and can use alternate backend for managing the state yourself. But if you are just getting started highly recommend creating a Pulumi Cloud account and running

pulumi login

. Especially, if you aren't familiar with the concept of state backends.

Sweet! This is what I was looking for. I have mostly worked in terraform. Currently toying with terraform-cdk and wanting to compare it with pulumi. Trying something easy like creating a repo in a github org and things like that.

Gotcha. I wrote a post earlier this year comparing CDK and Pulumi but not specifically TF CDK. I think TF CDK inherits the core features anyway so much of what I list in that post could still be helpful.

Thanks I will give this a read! Right now I am just trying to get a simple example built with each for feedback in my team.