head to head · open source
portainer vs itamae
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. itamae has 1,134 stars, 117 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 3,319% (38,767 vs 1,134 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; itamae is written in Ruby under MIT. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, itamae 10%. 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 | itamae | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 117 |
| 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 itamae if
- You want the itamae feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and itamae 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 itamae
Simple and lightweight configuration management tool inspired by Chef. CHANGELOG Concept Chef like DSL (but not compatible with Chef) Simpler and lighter weight than Chef Only recipes Idempotent Installation Getting Started Create a recipe file as recipe.rb : And then execute itamae command to apply a recipe to a local machine. Or you can apply a recipe to a remote machine by itamae ssh . You can also apply a recipe to Vagrant VM by itamae ssh vagrant . You can find further information to use Itamae on Itamae Wiki. Enjoy! Documentation Run tests Requirements: Vagrant Get Involved Join Slack team Presentations /…
read the full itamae overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or itamae more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and itamae has 1,134. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and itamae free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and itamae under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and itamae?
portainer is written in TypeScript and itamae in Ruby. 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 itamae?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose itamae if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.