What is terraform-provider-aws?

hashicorp/terraform-provider-aws — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-06-24

★ 10,874GoAudience · ops devopsComplexity · 3/5Setup · moderate

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((Terraform AWS Provider))
    What it does
      Manages AWS resources
      Translates HCL to API calls
      Official HashiCorp provider
    Resources Covered
      Servers and networking
      Databases
      Storage buckets
    Tech Stack
      Go
      Terraform
    Audience
      DevOps engineers
      Cloud architects
    Links
      Docs site
      Contributing guide
      Security contact

mindmap root((Terraform AWS Provider)) What it does Manages AWS resources Translates HCL to API calls Official HashiCorp provider Resources Covered Servers and networking Databases Storage buckets Tech Stack Go Terraform Audience DevOps engineers Cloud architects Links Docs site Contributing guide Security contact

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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Write Terraform code that automatically provisions an EC2 server, RDS database, and S3 bucket in your AWS account.

USE CASE 2

Automate the teardown and rebuild of a staging environment in AWS using Terraform and this provider.

USE CASE 3

Contribute a new AWS service resource or fix a bug in the provider for a service your team uses.

USE CASE 4

Follow the quarterly roadmap to plan which new AWS features will be supported in upcoming Terraform releases.

What is it built with?

GoTerraform

How does it compare?

	hashicorp/terraform-provider-aws	dtm-labs/dtm	containers/skopeo
Stars	10,874	10,873	10,859
Language	Go	Go	Go
Setup difficulty	moderate	hard	moderate
Complexity	3/5	4/5	3/5
Audience	ops devops	developer	ops devops

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · moderate Time to first run · 30min

Requires a configured AWS account with appropriate IAM credentials and Terraform CLI installed.

Use freely for any purpose, including commercial use.

So what is it?

This repository contains the official AWS provider for Terraform, a tool that lets you describe your cloud infrastructure in code and then create or update it automatically. The AWS provider is what makes Terraform able to manage resources on Amazon Web Services, such as servers, databases, storage buckets, networking rules, and many other services. When you write a Terraform configuration that includes AWS resources, this provider translates those instructions into API calls to AWS. Without it, Terraform would have no way to talk to AWS. The provider is maintained by HashiCorp, the company behind Terraform, and covers an extensive range of AWS services. The README is brief and mostly links to external resources: the official documentation, a contributing guide for developers who want to add features or fix bugs, a quarterly development roadmap, and tutorials for getting started. There is also a contact address for reporting security issues responsibly.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

How do I configure the Terraform AWS provider and write a basic .tf file that creates an S3 bucket and an EC2 instance?

Prompt 2

Show me a Terraform module using the AWS provider that sets up a VPC with public and private subnets and a NAT gateway.

Prompt 3

How do I set up Terraform remote state in S3 with DynamoDB locking using the AWS provider?

Prompt 4

What AWS IAM permissions does the Terraform AWS provider need to manage EC2, RDS, and S3 resources?

Prompt 5

Walk me through contributing a new resource to the terraform-provider-aws, from setting up the Go dev environment to writing acceptance tests.

Frequently asked questions