head to head · open source
portainer vs wtf
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars, 2,934 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. wtf has 17,139 stars, 867 forks, 107 open issues and last shipped 13 days ago. portainer leads on adoption by 126% (38,767 vs 17,139 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; wtf is written in Go under MPL-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, wtf 5%. portainer was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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 | wtf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 17K |
| License | Zlib | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 867 |
| 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 wtf if
- You want the wtf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and wtf 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 wtf
:rotating light: :warning: This project is going through some changes as we prepare for v1.0. This includes a rename from WTF to Tessera ! Stay tuned! :warning: :rotating light: WTF (aka 'wtfutil') is the personal information dashboard for your terminal, providing at a glance access to your very important but infrequently needed stats and data. Used by thousands of developers and tech people around the world, WTF is free and open source. To support the continued use and development of WTF, please consider sponsoring WTF via GitHub Sponsors. Are you a contributor or sponsor? Awesome! See here for how you can…
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or wtf more popular?
portainer has 38,767 GitHub stars and wtf has 17,139. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and wtf free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and wtf under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and wtf?
portainer is written in TypeScript and wtf 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 wtf?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,767 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose wtf if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.