head to head · open source
portainer vs chef
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. chef has 8,259 stars, 2,521 forks, 411 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 369% (38,767 vs 8,259 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; chef is written in Ruby under Apache-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, chef 31%. chef 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 | chef | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 8.3K |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| 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 chef if
- You want the chef feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and chef 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 chef
Chef Infra Umbrella Project : Chef Infra Project State : Active Issues Response Time Maximum : 14 days Pull Request Response Time Maximum : 14 days Getting Started Chef Infra is a configuration management tool designed to bring automation to your entire infrastructure. Want to try Chef Infra? For Chef Infra usage, please refer to Learn Chef, our self paced, entirely free learning platform. Learn Chef also includes module based training for Chef Infra, as well as Chef Automate, Chef Habitat, and Chef InSpec. Other useful resources for Chef Infra users: Documentation: Source: Tickets/Issues: Slack: Chef Community…
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or chef more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and chef has 8,259. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and chef free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and chef under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and chef?
portainer is written in TypeScript and chef in Ruby. 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 chef?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose chef if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.