head to head · open source
portainer vs Nitric
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Nitric has 2,020 stars, 124 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. portainer leads on adoption by 1,819% (38,767 vs 2,020 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; Nitric is written in Go under Apache-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Nitric 6%. portainer 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 | Nitric | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 124 |
| 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 Nitric if
- You want the Nitric 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 Nitric 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 Nitric
Effortless backends with infrastructure from code Nitric is a multi language framework, with concise inline infrastructure from code. Modern applications should be robust, productive and a joy to build. Nitric solves common problems building for modern platforms: Easy infrastructure from code Build for any host without coupling Run locally IAM for humans Common resources like databases, queues/topics, APIs, key value, buckets and more Change services, IaC tools or cloud providers without changing code We also know abstraction should mean building on existing layers, not hiding them. Nitric includes powerful…
read the full Nitric overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or Nitric more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and Nitric has 2,020. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and Nitric free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and Nitric under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and Nitric?
portainer is written in TypeScript and Nitric 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 Nitric?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose Nitric if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.