head to head · open source
portainer vs mirrord
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mirrord has 5,400 stars, 226 forks, 73 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 618% (38,767 vs 5,400 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; mirrord is written in Rust under MIT. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, mirrord 4%. mirrord was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | mirrord | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 5.4K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 226 |
| 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 mirrord if
- You want the mirrord feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and mirrord 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 mirrord
mirrord runs your local process inside a live Kubernetes cluster. It works the same way for developers and for AI coding agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Copilot, Windsurf): your code runs on your machine, but mirrord routes its traffic, files, and environment variables through a target pod in the cluster. That covers both halves of the software development loop. Read live cluster context while writing the code (real env vars, real service responses, real queue contents) so the change is grounded in what's actually deployed. Then run the code against those same services and data to confirm it works end to…
read the full mirrord overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or mirrord more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and mirrord has 5,400. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and mirrord free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and mirrord under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and mirrord?
portainer is written in TypeScript and mirrord in Rust. 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 mirrord?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose mirrord if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.