head to head · open source
portainer vs octodns
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. octodns has 3,774 stars, 453 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. portainer leads on adoption by 927% (38,767 vs 3,774 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; octodns is written in Python under MIT. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, octodns 12%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| portainer | octodns | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 3.8K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 453 |
| 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 octodns if
- You want the octodns feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and octodns 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 octodns
DNS as code Tools for managing DNS across multiple providers In the vein of infrastructure as code octoDNS provides a set of tools & patterns that make it easy to manage your DNS records across multiple providers. The resulting config can live in a repository and be deployed just like the rest of your code, maintaining a clear history and using your existing review & workflow. The architecture is pluggable and the tooling is flexible to make it applicable to a wide variety of use cases. Effort has been made to make adding new providers as easy as possible. In the simple case that involves writing of a single…
read the full octodns overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Cloud Infrastructure Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Cloud Infrastructure Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or octodns more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and octodns has 3,774. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and octodns free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and octodns under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and octodns?
portainer is written in TypeScript and octodns in Python. 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 octodns?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose octodns if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.