head to head · open source
portainer vs aws-cdk
portainer has 38,523 GitHub stars, 2,907 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. aws-cdk has 12,902 stars, 4,631 forks, 2,863 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. portainer leads on adoption by 199% (38,523 vs 12,902 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; aws-cdk is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, aws-cdk 36%. portainer 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 | aws-cdk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 13K |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 4.6K |
| 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 aws-cdk if
- You want the aws-cdk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and aws-cdk 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 aws-cdk
AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) is an open source software development framework for defining cloud infrastructure in code and provisioning it through AWS CloudFormation. It lives in the AWS ecosystem and ships under the Apache 2.0 license, with the core implementation written in TypeScript. The framework offers a high level object oriented abstraction that lets developers define AWS resources imperatively using modern programming languages rather than writing raw CloudFormation templates by hand.
read the full aws-cdk overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or aws-cdk more popular?
portainer has 38,523 GitHub stars and aws-cdk has 12,902. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and aws-cdk free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and aws-cdk under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and aws-cdk?
portainer is written in TypeScript and aws-cdk 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, portainer or aws-cdk?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,523 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose aws-cdk if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.