head to head · open source
portainer vs meshery
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. meshery has 12,116 stars, 4,086 forks, 1,983 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 220% (38,767 vs 12,116 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; meshery is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, meshery 34%. meshery 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 | meshery | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 12K |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 4.1K |
| 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 meshery if
- You want the meshery feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and meshery 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 meshery
If you like Meshery, please ★ this repository to show your support! 🤩 MESHERY IS A CLOUD NATIVE COMPUTING FOUNDATION PROJECT A self service engineering platform, Meshery , is the open source, cloud native manager that enables the design and management of all Kubernetes based infrastructure and applications (multi cloud). As an extensible platform, Meshery offers visual and collaborative GitOps, freeing you from the chains of YAML while managing Kubernetes multi cluster deployments. Try Meshery in your browser using the Cloud Native Playground ( teaser video ) Functionality Infrastructure Lifecycle Management…
read the full meshery overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or meshery more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and meshery has 12,116. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and meshery free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and meshery under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and meshery?
portainer is written in TypeScript and meshery in TypeScript. 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 meshery?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose meshery if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.