head to head · open source
portainer vs burrito
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars, 2,906 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. burrito has 754 stars, 67 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 5,009% (38,524 vs 754 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%. burrito 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 | ★ 754 |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 67 |
| 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, 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 burrito
Burrito is open source Apache 2.0 Kubernetes Operator, written Go, that watches Terraform, OpenTofu, and Terragrunt code continuously and plans or applies it, sold by maintainers as "Argo CD for Terraform" and aimed at platform and infrastructure teams that already run Terraform and Kubernetes but have no GitOps control loop for state drift.
read the full burrito overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or burrito more popular?
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars and burrito has 754. 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 (38,524 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose burrito if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.