head to head · open source
portainer vs Digger
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Digger has 5,061 stars, 611 forks, 482 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. portainer leads on adoption by 666% (38,767 vs 5,061 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; Digger is written in Go under MIT. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Digger 12%. portainer 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| portainer | Digger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 5.1K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 611 |
| 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 Digger if
- You want the Digger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Digger 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 Digger
Community Slack Schedule a call Demo Video Docs Heads up: We’ve rebranded! Starting from 7th November 2025, the Digger project is now OpenTaco. The company’s still Digger, same battle tested engine — just a more apt name and a bigger vision. TL;DR Before: Best in class Terraform PR automation (a solid improvement upon Atlantis) After: The only piece of software you need to run Terraform or OpenTofu in production. We'll gradually update all our marketing material to reflect the same! CI/CD for Terraform is tricky. To make life easier, specialized CI systems aka TACOS exist Terraform Cloud, Spacelift, Atlantis…
read the full Digger 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 Digger more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and Digger has 5,061. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and Digger free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and Digger under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and Digger?
portainer is written in TypeScript and Digger 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 Digger?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose Digger if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.