head to head · open source
portainer vs karpor
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. karpor has 1,724 stars, 115 forks, 93 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. portainer leads on adoption by 2,149% (38,767 vs 1,724 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; karpor is written in Go under Apache-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, karpor 7%. 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 | karpor | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 115 |
| 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 karpor if
- You want the karpor 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 karpor 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 karpor
Intelligence for Kubernetes 🎮 Live Demo • 🌐 Website • ⚡️ Quick Start • 📚 Docs • 💬 Discussions [English] [中文] [Português] [日本語] What is Karpor? Karpor is Intelligence for Kubernetes. It brings advanced Search , Insight and AI to Kubernetes. It is essentially a Kubernetes Visualization Tool . With Karpor, you can gain crucial visibility into your Kubernetes clusters across any clouds. We hope to become a small and beautiful, vendor neutral, developer friendly, community driven open source project! Current Status : We are iterating v0.7.0, welcome to join the discussion. Why Karpor? 🔍 Search Automatic Syncing…
read the full karpor overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or karpor more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and karpor has 1,724. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and karpor free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and karpor under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and karpor?
portainer is written in TypeScript and karpor 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 karpor?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose karpor if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.