head to head · open source
portainer vs pyinfra
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pyinfra has 6,064 stars, 564 forks, 160 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 539% (38,767 vs 6,064 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; pyinfra is written in Python under MIT. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, pyinfra 9%. 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 | pyinfra | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 564 |
| 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 pyinfra if
- You want the pyinfra feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and pyinfra 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 pyinfra
pyinfra turns Python code into shell commands and runs them on your servers. Execute ad hoc commands and write declarative operations. Target SSH servers, local machine and Docker containers. Fast and scales from one server to thousands. Think ansible but Python instead of YAML, and a lot faster. Getting Started • Examples Repo • Chat on Matrix Documentation • Help & Support • Contributing Why pyinfra? Design features include: + 🚀 Super fast execution over thousands of hosts with predictable performance. + 🚨 Instant debugging with realtime stdin/stdout/stderr output ( vvv ). + 🔄 Idempotent…
read the full pyinfra overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or pyinfra more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and pyinfra has 6,064. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and pyinfra free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and pyinfra under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and pyinfra?
portainer is written in TypeScript and pyinfra 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 pyinfra?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose pyinfra if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.