Microsoft Azure and HashiCorp’s journey to 1 billion Terraform provider downloads

The HashiCorp Terraform AzureRM provider has officially surpassed 1 billion downloads — a moment that marks not only a technical milestone, but also highlights the story of how enterprises around the world have embraced cloud automation, built shared platforms, and transformed the way infrastructure is delivered on Azure.

The AzureRM provider abstracts complexity by managing Azure API versions on your behalf. The provider ensures that resources are fully compatible with one another and that configuration changes don't introduce breaking issues, thanks to its rigorous testing by both HashiCorp, an IBM company, and Microsoft teams. This milestone is a reflection of years of collaboration between HashiCorp, Microsoft, our joint customers, and the community. Together, we’ve made it easier for teams to provision, manage, and scale infrastructure on Azure — securely, reliably, efficiently, and consistently.

»From early adoption to enterprise scale

The AzureRM provider was introduced early in Terraform’s journey as demand surged for a consistent, codified approach to managing cloud infrastructure. Since then, it has grown to support:

• Hundreds of Azure services, from virtual networks and Kubernetes clusters to advanced identity, security, and policy services
• Integrations with Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, and CI/CD pipelines

Behind the scenes, the Terraform Azure provider has been developed in close partnership between HashiCorp and Microsoft engineers — with a strong emphasis on stable & reliable API coverage, performance, and a great developer experience.

»1 billion downloads on AzureRM — what it means

Reaching 1 billion downloads of the Terraform AzureRM provider marks a major milestone in our partnership with Microsoft and the broader Terraform community. It’s a testament to the trust organizations place in HashiCorp Terraform and Microsoft Azure to serve as the foundation for their infrastructure.

Since its creation in 2017, the AzureRM provider has grown to support approximately 1,400 resources and data sources across more than 110 Azure services, enabling platform teams to provision, test, and deploy with confidence. Today, it powers critical workloads across industries — from large enterprises and financial institutions to healthcare providers and fast-moving startups.

These downloads reflect real-world use cases: Teams are building scalable internal platforms, applying GitOps workflows, enforcing policy-as-code, and managing infrastructure in highly regulated environments.

Just as important, this milestone showcases the strength of the community. Thousands of GitHub issues and pull requests, shared modules, blog posts, and best practices have shaped the provider into what it is today.

Together, HashiCorp and Microsoft are helping customers securely and efficiently manage infrastructure as code across their businesses. One billion downloads is not just a number — it’s a reflection of how far we’ve come in meeting the evolving needs of our joint customers.

»Extending Azure infrastructure management with the Terraform AzAPI Terraform provider

As Azure continues to rapidly expand its platform, new services and features are often released in preview or with unique API models that traditional Terraform providers can’t immediately support. That’s where the AzAPI provider comes in.

The Terraform AzAPI provider, developed and maintained by Microsoft, complements the main Azure provider by enabling direct interaction with Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates and extending support to newly released or experimental resources.

Together, AzureRM and AzAPI offer the broadest, most flexible path for managing Azure infrastructure with Terraform. HashiCorp published a joint blog comparing AzureRM and AzAPI Terraform providers, offering insights on when to use each for optimal Azure infrastructure management. This guide along with Microsoft's Unlocking the Best of Azure with AzureRM and AzAPI providers helps you determine when to use AzureRM versus AzAPI, ensuring you get the most out of your Terraform and Azure infrastructure. The AzAPI provider has seen widespread adoption as it approaches the 100M downloads.

»What’s next

With the continued rise of platform engineering, multi-cloud adoption, and AI workloads, our roadmap together includes:

• Further expanding provider coverage and performance
• Drift detection, cost estimation, and advanced policy enforcement in HCP Terraform and Terraform Enterprise
• Deepening integrations into Microsoft’s developer ecosystem, including direct integration between GitHub Copilot and our new Terraform MCP server, enabling developers to interact with Terraform workflows and GitHub Copilot through natural language — right from their IDE.
• We continue to add functionality for our customers such as ephemeral values, Terraform migrate, and Terraform Stacks (public beta) to name a few. These features help teams manage infrastructure more securely, accelerate migrations, and simplify complex deployments — making it easier to scale and standardize across environments

We’re also working across teams to enable success through joint training, developer workshops, and events like Microsoft Build, HashiDays, HashiConf, and Microsoft Ignite.

Learn more: Terraform AzureRM provider Docs | AzAPI provider | HashiCorp + Microsoft Partnership