head to head · open source
portainer vs certimate
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars, 2,906 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. certimate has 9,313 stars, 901 forks, 51 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. portainer leads on adoption by 314% (38,524 vs 9,313 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; certimate is written in Go under MIT. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, certimate 10%. portainer 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
| portainer | certimate | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 9.3K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 901 |
| 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 certimate if
- You want the certimate feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and certimate 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 certimate
Certimate is an open source, MIT licensed, self hosted ACME client that automates the full lifecycle of SSL/TLS certificates — issuance, deployment, renewal, and monitoring — through a visual workflow, and it is built for DevOps engineers and infrastructure teams who manage certificates across many domains, registrars, and hosting providers.
read the full certimate overview →
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 portainer or certimate more popular?
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars and certimate has 9,313. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and certimate free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and certimate under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and certimate?
portainer is written in TypeScript and certimate 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 certimate?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,524 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose certimate if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.