Bicep is the native IaC solution for Azure.
The default used to be ARM templates but Bicep solved a couple of issues with ARM. However in the end Bicep is compiled to ARM templates so every limitation of ARM still exists.

What Is Bicep?

Bicep is a domain-specific language (DSL) developed and maintained by Microsoft. A Bicep file is transparently compiled (“transpiled”) into an ARM Template before deployment — there is no Bicep runtime and no new concepts introduced in Azure itself. This means Bicep has full, day-0 coverage of every Azure resource type.

Pros

• Natively supported by Azure — same API surface as ARM, available immediately when new features ship
• Much more concise than ARM JSON — a 150-line ARM template often becomes ~30 lines of Bicep
• Strong typing with excellent VS Code IntelliSense via the Bicep extension
• Based on HCL-inspired syntax — easier to read compared to raw JSON in ARM templates
• Provides a registry solution for centralised, reusable modules (local, ACR, or public registry)
• Native for loops and if conditions — no copy workarounds needed
• Decompile existing ARM JSON to Bicep with az bicep decompile

Cons

• What-If is not that great — preview output can be verbose and occasionally inaccurate
• Limited by ARM template language — if ARM can’t do it, Bicep can’t either
• Azure only — not useful for managing AWS, GCP, or on-premises resources
• Newer ecosystem — fewer community modules compared to the Terraform Registry (growing fast)

Quick Example

Deploy an Azure Storage Account:

param storageAccountName string
param location string = resourceGroup().location

resource storageAccount 'Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts@2023-01-01' = {
  name: storageAccountName
  location: location
  sku: { name: 'Standard_LRS' }
  kind: 'StorageV2'
  properties: {
    minimumTlsVersion: 'TLS1_2'
    allowBlobPublicAccess: false
    supportsHttpsTrafficOnly: true
  }
}

output primaryBlobEndpoint string = storageAccount.properties.primaryEndpoints.blob

az deployment group create \
  --resource-group my-rg \
  --template-file storage.bicep \
  --parameters storageAccountName=mystorageaccount123

Installing the Bicep CLI

# Via Azure CLI (recommended)
az bicep install && az bicep upgrade

# macOS
brew install bicep

# Windows
winget install -e --id Microsoft.Bicep

Links

Bicep Docs Bicep on GitHub Bicep Public Registry Bicep Playground

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Table of contents

• What If