head to head · open source
portainer vs karpor
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars, 2,906 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. karpor has 1,730 stars, 113 forks, 93 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. portainer leads on adoption by 2,127% (38,524 vs 1,730 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 | 2026-09-18 | 2026-07-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 113 |
| 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, 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 karpor
Karpor is an open source Kubernetes visualization tool written in Go and licensed under Apache 2.0. It lives in the cloud native Kubernetes ecosystem and presents itself as a vendor neutral, developer friendly, community driven project for developer and platform engineering teams.
read the full karpor overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or karpor more popular?
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars and karpor has 1,730. 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 (38,524 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose karpor if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.