head to head · open source
portainer vs mcp-gateway
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mcp-gateway has 903 stars, 94 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. portainer leads on adoption by 4,193% (38,767 vs 903 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; mcp-gateway is written in C# under MIT. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, mcp-gateway 10%. portainer was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (docker), 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 | mcp-gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 903 |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 94 |
| 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 mcp-gateway if
- You want the mcp-gateway feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and mcp-gateway 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 mcp-gateway
MCP Gateway MCP Gateway is a reverse proxy and management layer for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, enabling scalable, session aware routing, authorization and lifecycle management of MCP servers in Kubernetes environments. Table of Contents Overview Key Concepts Architecture Features Getting Started – Local Deployment Getting Started – 1 Click Deploy to Azure Overview This project provides: A data gateway for routing traffic to MCP servers with session affinity. A control plane for managing the MCP server lifecycle (deploy, update, delete). Enterprise ready integration points including telemetry, access…
read the full mcp-gateway overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or mcp-gateway more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and mcp-gateway has 903. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and mcp-gateway free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and mcp-gateway under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and mcp-gateway?
portainer is written in TypeScript and mcp-gateway in C#. 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 mcp-gateway?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose mcp-gateway if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.