head to head · open source
portainer vs burrito
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. burrito has 766 stars, 71 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. portainer leads on adoption by 4,961% (38,767 vs 766 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; burrito is written in Go under Apache-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, burrito 9%. portainer was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (kubernetes), 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 | burrito | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 766 |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 71 |
| 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 burrito if
- You want the burrito feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and burrito 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 burrito
[!WARNING] This project is still in a pre release state, minor versions will introduce breaking changes until 1.0 You should only use releases, as the main branch can be broken. burrito Burrito is a TACoS ( T erraform A utomation Co llaboration S oftware) Kubernetes Operator. Why does this exist? terraform is a tremendous tool to manage your infrastructure in IaC. However, it lacks built in solutions for managing state drift. Additionally, configuring a CI/CD pipeline for Terraform can be challenging and often varies depending on the selected tools. Finally, currently, there is no easy way to navigate your…
read the full burrito overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or burrito more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and burrito has 766. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and burrito free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and burrito under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and burrito?
portainer is written in TypeScript and burrito 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, portainer or burrito?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose burrito if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.