head to head · open source
portainer vs freelens
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars, 2,906 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. freelens has 5,596 stars, 333 forks, 223 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 588% (38,524 vs 5,596 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; freelens is written in TypeScript under MIT. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, freelens 6%. portainer 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 | freelens | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 333 |
| 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 freelens if
- You want the freelens feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and freelens 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 freelens
Freelens is a free and open source user interface for managing Kubernetes clusters. It is distributed as a standalone desktop application for macOS, Windows, and Linux, and it exists inside the cloud native ecosystem alongside the containers, DevOps, and Kubernetes tooling that its topic list names. The project is written in TypeScript and released under the MIT license, and it reached its current shape over roughly two years of development. The public repository carries more than five thousand stars and over three hundred forks, with an active issue tracker and community channels on Discord and Reddit.…
read the full freelens overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or freelens more popular?
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars and freelens has 5,596. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and freelens free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and freelens under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and freelens?
portainer is written in TypeScript and freelens in TypeScript. 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 freelens?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,524 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose freelens if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.