head to head · open source
portainer vs Yearning
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars, 2,906 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Yearning has 8,972 stars, 2,032 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped 26 days ago. portainer leads on adoption by 329% (38,524 vs 8,972 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; Yearning is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Yearning 23%. 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.
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Side by side
| portainer | Yearning | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 9.0K |
| License | Zlib | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 2.0K |
| 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 Yearning if
- You want the Yearning feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Yearning 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 Yearning
Yearning is a locally deployed, open source SQL audit and query auditing platform for MySQL, built in Go and aimed at DBAs and developers who need SQL review, approval workflows and query control inside their own infrastructure.
read the full Yearning overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or Yearning more popular?
portainer has 38,524 GitHub stars and Yearning has 8,972. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and Yearning free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and Yearning under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and Yearning?
portainer is written in TypeScript and Yearning 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 Yearning?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,524 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose Yearning if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.