head to head · open source
portainer vs OpenTofu
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenTofu has 30,703 stars, 1,414 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 26% (38,767 vs 30,703 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, OpenTofu 5%. OpenTofu 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 | OpenTofu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 31K |
| License | Zlib | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 OpenTofu if
- You want the OpenTofu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and OpenTofu 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 OpenTofu
Homepage Slack Get Started OpenTofu is an OSS tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. OpenTofu can manage existing and popular service providers as well as custom in house solutions. Getting help and contributing Have a question? Post it in GitHub Discussions Open a GitHub issue Join us in the opentofu channel on the CNCF Slack! Want to contribute? Please read the Contribution Guide. Recurring Events Community Meetings on Wednesdays at 12:30 UTC (calendar) Technical Steering Committee Meetings every other Tuesday at 4pm UTC (calendar) [!TIP] For more OpenTofu events…
read the full OpenTofu overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or OpenTofu more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and OpenTofu has 30,703. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and OpenTofu free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and OpenTofu under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and OpenTofu?
portainer is written in TypeScript and OpenTofu 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 OpenTofu?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose OpenTofu if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.