head to head · open source
portainer vs jenkins
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jenkins has 26,719 stars, 9,819 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 45% (38,767 vs 26,719 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; jenkins is written in Java under MIT. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, jenkins 37%. jenkins was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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 | jenkins | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 27K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 9.8K |
| 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 jenkins if
- You want the jenkins feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and jenkins fits your workflow better
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 →
About jenkins
Table of Contents About What to Use Jenkins for and When to Use It Downloads Getting Started (Development) Source Contributing to Jenkins News and Website Governance Adopters License About In a nutshell, Jenkins is the leading open source automation server. Built with Java, it provides over 2,000 plugins to support automating virtually anything, so that humans can spend their time doing things machines cannot. What to Use Jenkins for and When to Use It Use Jenkins to automate your development workflow, so you can focus on work that matters most. Jenkins is commonly used for: Building projects Running tests to…
read the full jenkins overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or jenkins more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and jenkins has 26,719. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and jenkins free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and jenkins under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and jenkins?
portainer is written in TypeScript and jenkins 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 jenkins?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose jenkins if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.