head to head · open source
rancher vs agent-orchestrator
rancher has 26,035 GitHub stars, 3,227 forks, 3,371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. agent-orchestrator has 14,059 stars, 1,912 forks, 711 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rancher leads on adoption by 85% (26,035 vs 14,059 stars). rancher is written in Go under Apache-2.0; agent-orchestrator is written in Go under Apache-2.0. rancher has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, agent-orchestrator 14%. agent-orchestrator was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| rancher | agent-orchestrator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 14K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rancher if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick agent-orchestrator if
- You want the agent-orchestrator feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and agent-orchestrator fits your workflow better
About rancher
Rancher Rancher is an open source container management platform built for organizations that deploy containers in production. Rancher makes it easy to run Kubernetes everywhere, meet IT requirements, and empower DevOps teams. Stable Release v2.15.1 rancher/rancher:v2.15.1 / rancher/rancher:stable Read the full release notes. To get automated notifications of our latest release, you can watch the announcements category in our forums, or subscribe to the RSS feed Quick Start sudo docker run d restart=unless stopped p 80:80 p 443:443 privileged rancher/rancher Open your browser to Installation See…
read the full rancher overview →
About agent-orchestrator
Agent Orchestrator Plan, run, and supervise coding agents from one place. Give every coding task its own agent, workspace, and feedback loop. Plan and delegate larger outcomes with a project aware orchestrator. Follow every worker, pull request, CI run, and review in a live Kanban. Download AO • Documentation • Releases • Contributing • Discord English · 简体中文 · 日本語 · 한국어 · Español · Français · Deutsch · Português (Brasil) A workspace for agent driven development One coding agent can handle a task. Running several across a project creates a different job: deciding what matters, splitting work…
read the full agent-orchestrator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rancher or agent-orchestrator more popular?
rancher has 26,035 GitHub stars and agent-orchestrator has 14,059. rancher has the larger community by that measure.
Are rancher and agent-orchestrator free?
Both are open source. rancher is licensed under Apache-2.0 and agent-orchestrator under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rancher and agent-orchestrator?
rancher is written in Go and agent-orchestrator in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, rancher or agent-orchestrator?
Choose rancher if you want the larger community (26,035 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose agent-orchestrator if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.