head to head · open source
portainer vs crossplane
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crossplane has 12,222 stars, 1,289 forks, 194 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 217% (38,767 vs 12,222 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; crossplane is written in Go under Apache-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, crossplane 11%. crossplane 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 | crossplane | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 12K |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 crossplane if
- You want the crossplane 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 crossplane 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 crossplane
Crossplane is a framework for building cloud native control planes without needing to write code. It has a highly extensible backend that enables you to build a control plane that can orchestrate applications and infrastructure no matter where they run, and a highly configurable frontend that puts you in control of the schema of the declarative API it offers. Crossplane is a [Cloud Native Computing Foundation][cncf] project. Get Started Crossplane's [Get Started Docs] covers install and resource quickstarts. Releases Currently maintained releases, as well as the next few upcoming releases are listed below. For…
read the full crossplane overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or crossplane more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and crossplane has 12,222. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and crossplane free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and crossplane under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and crossplane?
portainer is written in TypeScript and crossplane 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 crossplane?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose crossplane if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.