head to head · open source
portainer vs Terrateam
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars, 2,906 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Terrateam has 1,281 stars, 74 forks, 110 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 2,907% (38,524 vs 1,281 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; Terrateam is written in OCaml under MPL-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Terrateam 6%. Terrateam 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 | Terrateam | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | Zlib | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | OCaml |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 74 |
| 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 Terrateam if
- You want the Terrateam feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches OCaml
- You evaluated both and Terrateam fits your workflow better
About portainer
Portainer Community Edition is a free, lightweight container management UI for Docker, Swarm, Podman, Kubernetes, and ACI environments, distributed under the zlib licence and aimed at homelab operators, hobbyists, students, and anyone experimenting with containers on their own hardware.
read the full portainer overview →
About Terrateam
Terrateam is a GitOps orchestration project for infrastructure as code. It is written in OCaml, released under the MPL 2.0 license, and listed under Infrastructure & Operations / Cloud Infrastructure Management. The project lives in the Terraform, OpenTofu, GitHub, GitLab, DevOps automation, and cloud infrastructure management ecosystem. Its README describes a pull request workflow for planning, reviewing, and applying infrastructure changes, and it states that Terrateam and Stategraph have merged into one platform during a gradual transition.
read the full Terrateam overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or Terrateam more popular?
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars and Terrateam has 1,281. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and Terrateam free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and Terrateam under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and Terrateam?
portainer is written in TypeScript and Terrateam in OCaml. 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 Terrateam?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,524 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose Terrateam if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.