head to head · open source
portainer vs terragrunt
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. terragrunt has 9,910 stars, 1,248 forks, 235 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 291% (38,767 vs 9,910 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; terragrunt is written in Go under MIT. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, terragrunt 13%. terragrunt 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 | terragrunt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 9.9K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 terragrunt if
- You want the terragrunt feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and terragrunt 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 terragrunt
Terragrunt 🎉 Terragrunt v1.0 is here! Read the announcement to learn more. Terragrunt is a flexible orchestration tool that allows Infrastructure as Code written in OpenTofu/Terraform to scale. Please see the following for more info, including install instructions and complete documentation: Terragrunt Website Getting started with Terragrunt Terragrunt Documentation Terragrunt Scale Contributing to Terragrunt Commercial Support Join the Discord! Join our community for discussions, support, and contributions: License This code is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt.
read the full terragrunt overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or terragrunt more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and terragrunt has 9,910. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and terragrunt free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and terragrunt under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and terragrunt?
portainer is written in TypeScript and terragrunt 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 terragrunt?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose terragrunt if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.