head to head · open source
portainer vs floci
portainer has 38,526 GitHub stars, 2,907 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. floci has 24,751 stars, 2,682 forks, 130 open issues and last shipped today. portainer leads on adoption by 56% (38,526 vs 24,751 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; floci is written in Java under MIT. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, floci 11%. floci was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (docker), 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
| portainer | floci | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 25K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick portainer if
- You weight community size — 39K stars and counting
- You want the Zlib license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick floci if
- You want the floci feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and floci fits your workflow better
About portainer
Portainer Community Edition is a free, lightweight container management UI for Docker, Swarm, Podman, Kubernetes, and ACI environments, distributed under the zlib licence and aimed at homelab operators, hobbyists, students, and anyone experimenting with containers on their own hardware.
read the full portainer overview →
About floci
Floci is a free, MIT licensed, open source local AWS emulator that gives developers, testers, and CI pipelines AWS shaped services on their own machine without a cloud account, an auth token, or paid feature gates.
read the full floci overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or floci more popular?
portainer has 38,526 GitHub stars and floci has 24,751. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and floci free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and floci under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and floci?
portainer is written in TypeScript and floci in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, portainer or floci?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,526 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose floci if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.