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CloudStack Canvas vs Cloudcraft

Visual design vs infrastructure visualization

Cloudcraft is owned by Datadog and specializes in visualizing existing AWS infrastructure. CloudStack Canvas generates deployable infrastructure code from your design. They answer different questions — Cloudcraft shows "what you have," CSC generates "what to build."

Category

CloudStack Canvas

Cloudcraft

Primary Use

Generate IaC from scratch — design, export CloudFormation/Terraform, deploy

Different problems: CSC is for building, Cloudcraft is for documenting

Visualize existing AWS infrastructure — read-only diagrams of your live resources

Output

Deployable CloudFormation (JSON/YAML) and Terraform

PNG/PDF diagrams for documentation

Service Coverage

44 fully-supported AWS services + Terraform equivalent

Broad coverage (100+) but visualization-only — no code generation

Security & IAM

Auto-generates least-privilege IAM roles and security group rules based on connections

Shows existing IAM policies and rules — no generation

Cost Estimation

Built-in — see monthly cost before you deploy

Yes, but requires connecting existing resources

Collaboration

Real-time editing for Pro (solo) and Team (up to 5 concurrent editors)

Limited — primarily single-user visualization

Best For

Engineers building new infrastructure or exploring AWS design options

Teams documenting existing infrastructure or creating architecture diagrams

The verdict

If you're designing a new AWS setup and want to export working code, use CloudStack Canvas. If you need to document or visualize infrastructure you already have, use Cloudcraft. They're complementary — CSC builds, Cloudcraft documents.

Try CloudStack Canvas free

No credit card. Free tier includes 2 projects and 25 exports per month.