head to head · open source
portainer vs spug
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. spug has 11,101 stars, 2,199 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. portainer leads on adoption by 249% (38,767 vs 11,101 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; spug is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, spug 20%. 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 | spug | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 11K |
| License | Zlib | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 spug if
- You want the spug feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and spug 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 spug
English 简体中文 Spug Spug is a lightweight agent free automatic operation and maintenance platform designed for small and medium sized enterprises. It integrates host management, host batch execution, host online terminal, file management, application release and deployment, pipelines, online task planning, configuration center, monitoring, alarm and so on. Demo Demo： The demo environment runs the latest version and resets its data every hour, both the English and the Simplified Chinese interface are available from the globe icon in the header. 🔥Push Assistant Push Assistant is a message push platform that…
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 spug more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and spug has 11,101. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and spug free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and spug under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and spug?
portainer is written in TypeScript and spug in JavaScript. 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 spug?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose spug if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.