head to head · open source
rancher vs Archon
rancher has 26,031 GitHub stars, 3,225 forks, 3,371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Archon has 23,807 stars, 3,518 forks, 321 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rancher leads on adoption by 9% (26,031 vs 23,807 stars). rancher is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Archon is written in TypeScript under MIT. rancher has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Archon 15%. Archon 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 | Archon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 24K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 3.5K |
| 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 Archon if
- You want the Archon feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Archon 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 Archon
Archon The first open source harness builder for AI coding. Make AI coding deterministic and repeatable. Archon is a workflow engine for AI coding agents. Define your development processes as YAML workflows planning, implementation, validation, code review, PR creation and run them reliably across all your projects. Like what Dockerfiles did for infrastructure and GitHub Actions did for CI/CD Archon does for AI coding workflows. Think n8n, but for software development. Why Archon? When you ask an AI agent to "fix this bug", what happens depends on the model's mood. It might skip planning. It might forget to run…
read the full Archon overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rancher or Archon more popular?
rancher has 26,031 GitHub stars and Archon has 23,807. rancher has the larger community by that measure.
Are rancher and Archon free?
Both are open source. rancher is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Archon under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rancher and Archon?
rancher is written in Go and Archon in TypeScript. 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 Archon?
Choose rancher if you want the larger community (26,031 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Archon if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.