head to head · open source
portainer vs kubevious
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kubevious has 1,794 stars, 102 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. portainer leads on adoption by 2,061% (38,767 vs 1,794 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; kubevious is written in various languages under Apache-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, kubevious 6%. portainer was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (docker, 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 | kubevious | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | — |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-06-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 102 |
| 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 kubevious if
- You want the kubevious feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- You evaluated both and kubevious 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 kubevious
Kubevious (pronounced [kju:bvi:əs]) is a suite of app centric assurance, validation, and introspection products for Kubernetes. It helps running modern Kubernetes applications without disasters and costly outages by continuously validating application manifests, cluster state, and configuration. Kubevious projects detect and prevent errors( typos, misconfigurations, conflicts, inconsistencies ) and violations of best practices. Our secret sauce is based on the ability to validate across multiple manifests and look at the configuration from the application vantage point. Projects: 📺 Kubevious CLI 🔭 Kubevious…
read the full kubevious overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or kubevious more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and kubevious has 1,794. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and kubevious free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and kubevious under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and kubevious?
portainer is written in TypeScript and kubevious in various languages. 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 kubevious?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose kubevious if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.