head to head · open source
portainer vs Digger
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars, 2,906 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Digger has 5,044 stars, 611 forks, 482 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. portainer leads on adoption by 664% (38,524 vs 5,044 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.
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Side by side
| portainer | Digger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-15 |
| 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, 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 Digger
Digger is an open source infrastructure as code orchestration tool written in Go and released under the MIT license. It runs Terraform natively inside an existing CI pipeline rather than on a separate hosted service, and it lives in the Terraform and OpenTofu ecosystem alongside the category of tools the project calls TACOS, or Terraform Automation and Collaboration Software. The project has been rebranded to OpenTaco as of 7 November 2025, while the company behind it remains Digger and the engine is unchanged.
read the full Digger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or Digger more popular?
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars and Digger has 5,044. 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 (38,524 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose Digger if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.