head to head · open source
kubernetes vs sops
kubernetes has 127,813 GitHub stars, 44,561 forks, 3,072 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sops has 23,155 stars, 1,082 forks, 446 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kubernetes leads on adoption by 452% (127,813 vs 23,155 stars). kubernetes is written in Go under Apache-2.0; sops is written in Go under MPL-2.0. kubernetes has attracted 35% as many forks as stars, sops 5%. kubernetes 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.
← all 15422 open source comparisons
Side by side
| kubernetes | sops | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 128K | ★ 23K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 45K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick kubernetes if
- You weight community size — 128K 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 sops if
- You want the sops feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and sops fits your workflow better
About kubernetes
Kubernetes (K8s) is an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed system for managing containerized applications across multiple hosts, hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and aimed at teams who deploy, maintain and scale container packaged and microservices oriented workloads in production.
read the full kubernetes overview →
About sops
SOPS, short for Secrets OPerationS, is an editor of encrypted files written in Go and released under the Mozilla Public License Version 2.0. It handles YAML, JSON, ENV, INI and BINARY formats, and it encrypts those files using AWS KMS, GCP KMS, Azure Key Vault, HuaweiCloud KMS, age, or PGP. The project lives in the cloud native infrastructure ecosystem: it started at Mozilla in 2015, was donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation in 2023, and is now a CNCF Sandbox project under a new group of maintainers. It carries 23,121 stars and 1,080 forks, with documentation hosted at getsops.io.
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Cloud Infrastructure Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Cloud Infrastructure Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is kubernetes or sops more popular?
kubernetes has 127,813 GitHub stars and sops has 23,155. kubernetes has the larger community by that measure.
Are kubernetes and sops free?
Both are open source. kubernetes is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sops under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kubernetes and sops?
kubernetes is written in Go and sops 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, kubernetes or sops?
Choose kubernetes if you want the larger community (127,813 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sops if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.