Question 1

What's the difference between CDK and CloudFormation (or ARM/Bicep)?

Accepted Answer

CDK lets you write infrastructure using a programming language (like TypeScript or Python) and then generates a deployment template (for AWS CDK, that template is CloudFormation). CloudFormation/ARM/Bicep are primarily declarative template formats where you describe the desired end state directly. CDK adds higher-level abstractions (constructs), code reuse, and testing, but the final deployment still uses the underlying platform’s engine (e.g., CloudFormation on AWS).

Question 2

When should I use CDK?

Accepted Answer

Use CDK when you want reusable infrastructure components, shared patterns across teams, and the ability to use programming features like loops, conditions, and unit tests. It’s especially helpful for complex stacks (VPCs, microservices, event-driven systems) and for organizations standardizing on approved building blocks. If your infrastructure is very small or your team prefers simple declarative templates, a plain template approach (CloudFormation/Bicep/Terraform HCL) may be simpler.

Question 3

How much does CDK cost?

Accepted Answer

The CDK toolkits themselves are generally free to use. Costs come from the cloud resources you deploy (compute, storage, networking, managed services) and from any supporting services used for deployments (for AWS CDK, deployments run through AWS CloudFormation; you may also incur costs for CI/CD services like CodePipeline/GitHub Actions runners, artifact storage, and logging).

CDK

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