head to head · open source
Coolify vs portainer
Coolify has 65,596 GitHub stars, 5,915 forks, 649 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer has 38,776 stars, 2,935 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped today. Coolify leads on adoption by 69% (65,596 vs 38,776 stars). Coolify is written in PHP under Apache-2.0; portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib. Coolify has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, portainer 8%. portainer was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (docker, docker-compose), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| Coolify | portainer | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 66K | ★ 39K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Zlib |
| Written in | PHP | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.9K | ⑂ 2.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Coolify if
- You weight community size — 66K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick portainer if
- You want the portainer feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Zlib license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and portainer fits your workflow better
About Coolify
Coolify An open source & self hostable Heroku / Netlify / Vercel alternative. About the Project Coolify is an open source & self hostable alternative to Heroku / Netlify / Vercel / etc. It helps you manage your servers, applications, and databases on your own hardware; you only need an SSH connection. You can manage VPS, Bare Metal, Raspberry PIs, and anything else. Imagine having the ease of a cloud but with your own servers. That is Coolify . No vendor lock in, which means that all the configurations for your applications/databases/etc are saved to your server. So, if you decide to stop using Coolify (oh…
read the full Coolify overview →
About portainer
Portainer Community Edition is a free, lightweight container management UI for Docker, Swarm, Podman, Kubernetes, and ACI environments. It is provided as is, at no cost, for the convenience of homelab operators, hobbyists, students, and anyone experimenting with containers on their own hardware. Portainer Business Edition builds on the same open source base and adds the features, hardening, and commercial support that production and enterprise environments require (RBAC, GitOps, edge management, audit, SSO, and more). Find out more about Portainer Business Edition features Take3 – get 3 free nodes of Portainer…
read the full portainer overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Coolify or portainer more popular?
Coolify has 65,596 GitHub stars and portainer has 38,776. Coolify has the larger community by that measure.
Are Coolify and portainer free?
Both are open source. Coolify is licensed under Apache-2.0 and portainer under Zlib. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Coolify and portainer?
Coolify is written in PHP and portainer 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, Coolify or portainer?
Choose Coolify if you want the larger community (65,596 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose portainer if its feature set, stack or Zlib licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.