Crossplane is an open-source project that extends Kubernetes to manage cloud infrastructure resources. Instead of using separate tools like Terraform or Pulumi, Crossplane lets you define and manage databases, storage buckets, networking, and any cloud service using the same Kubernetes API you already use for your applications.
The idea is powerful: define an AWS RDS database, a Google Cloud Storage bucket, or an Azure Virtual Network as Kubernetes custom resources, and Crossplane’s controllers will create and manage them. This means infrastructure can be managed with the same GitOps workflows, RBAC policies, and tooling used for application workloads.
Crossplane supports all major cloud providers through provider packages and lets platform teams create custom APIs (called Compositions) that abstract away cloud-specific details. Application developers request resources through simple claims without needing to know the underlying cloud implementation.
The project was originally created by Upbound, which offers a commercial distribution and a managed control plane service. Crossplane joined the CNCF as a sandbox project and graduated to incubation status. It’s gained traction with organizations adopting a platform engineering approach to infrastructure management.
