Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your HCL file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert HCL to another file type
To convert HCL configuration files to another format, you need Terraform or other Developer software.
Convert a file to HCL
To convert other file formats to the "Configuration File" file type, you need software like Terraform or a similar tool.
About HCL files
The .HCL file extension is most commonly associated with the HashiCorp Configuration Language, a structured configuration language heavily used by Terraform to define cloud infrastructure as code. A secondary, highly specific use case is the HotDocs Clause Archive, a file type generated by HotDocs document automation software to store reusable text clauses for complex legal document assembly. Users often need to convert HashiCorp .HCL files because, despite being human-readable, the syntax is highly specific; sharing infrastructure data with generic external APIs, compliance scanners, or reporting tools requires a standard data format. Meanwhile, the HotDocs Clause Archive format is entirely proprietary and closed, meaning you cannot open it without an expensive, active HotDocs license, which completely prevents collaboration with external, non-licensed users. For HashiCorp files, the absolute best conversion target is JSON, as the two formats share deep interoperability and native support within HashiCorp tools. For HotDocs archives, users typically seek to convert the text into DOCX or PDF to actually read the legal clauses. Converting the HotDocs .HCL file format is notoriously difficult because it is a closed, proprietary archive. Standard online converters fail to process it because only the original software can properly read or export the structured clause data. Even if official software is missing, our platform will inspect the file's hex data, reveal underlying plain text or embedded document structures, and help you extract usable data from an otherwise locked file.
Convert.Guru analyzes your HCL file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert HCL file to JSON, YAML, JPG, CL2, CSV, XML, YML, TOML, INI, CFG, CONF or DAT, you can use Terraform or similar software from the "Infrastructure as Code Configuration" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert DBF, XML, SQLITE, XLSX, SQL, TSV, ACCDB, YAML, MDB, CSV, ODS or JSON files to HCL, try Terraform or another comparable tool in the "Infrastructure as Code Configuration" category.
The HCL Converter Story
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our HCL converter.