head to head · open source
portainer vs terratest
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars, 2,906 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. terratest has 7,944 stars, 1,371 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 385% (38,524 vs 7,944 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; terratest is written in Go under Apache-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, terratest 17%. portainer was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (docker), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | terratest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 7.9K |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| 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 terratest if
- You want the terratest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and terratest 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 terratest
Terratest is an Apache 2.0 Go library maintained by Gruntwork that provides helper functions and patterns for writing automated tests against infrastructure code, and it is aimed at engineers who validate Terraform modules, Packer templates, Docker images, Kubernetes resources and AWS, Azure or GCP infrastructure inside a Go test suite.
read the full terratest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or terratest more popular?
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars and terratest has 7,944. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and terratest free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and terratest under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and terratest?
portainer is written in TypeScript and terratest 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 terratest?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,524 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose terratest if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.