head to head · open source
portainer vs devtron
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars, 2,906 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. devtron has 5,599 stars, 595 forks, 777 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. portainer leads on adoption by 588% (38,524 vs 5,599 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; devtron is written in Go under Apache-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, devtron 11%. 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.
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Side by side
| portainer | devtron | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 595 |
| 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 devtron if
- You want the devtron 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 devtron 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 devtron
Devtron is an open source Kubernetes dashboard and management platform, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the Kubernetes and cloud native ecosystem, and its topic list places it alongside tools such as ArgoCD, Helm, and the managed clusters of AKS and EKS. The project describes itself as an AI native Kubernetes management platform that unifies application and infrastructure management, with an extensible dashboard as its main surface. The repository is six years old, has accumulated roughly 5,595 stars and 592 forks, and was last pushed in September 2026.
read the full devtron overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or devtron more popular?
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars and devtron has 5,599. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and devtron free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and devtron under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and devtron?
portainer is written in TypeScript and devtron 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 devtron?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,524 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose devtron if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.