head to head · open source
portainer vs jx
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jx has 4,691 stars, 787 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 726% (38,767 vs 4,691 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; jx is written in Go under Apache-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, jx 17%. portainer was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (hacktoberfest, 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 | jx | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 4.7K |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 787 |
| 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 jx if
- You want the jx 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 jx 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 jx
JayeX CLI jx is the modular command line CLI for JayeX 3.x Commands See the jx command reference Issues To track issues in this repository and all the related Plugins use these links: view open issues in jenkins x plugins view open pull requests in jenkins x plugins Plugins You can browse the documentation for all of the jx plugins at: Plugin CLI Reference Plugin Source Components jx git operator is an operator for triggering jobs when git commits are made octant jx an open source JayeX UI for vmware tanzu/octant Libraries These are the modular libraries which have been refactored out of the main jenkins x/jx…
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or jx more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and jx has 4,691. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and jx free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and jx under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and jx?
portainer is written in TypeScript and jx 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 jx?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose jx if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.