head to head · open source
portainer vs Pulumi
portainer has 38,526 GitHub stars, 2,907 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Pulumi has 25,705 stars, 1,430 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 50% (38,526 vs 25,705 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Pulumi 6%. Pulumi 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 | Pulumi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 26K |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-19 |
| 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 Pulumi if
- You want the Pulumi 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 Pulumi 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 Pulumi
Pulumi is an open source infrastructure as code tool that lets teams define and deploy cloud infrastructure using general purpose programming languages instead of YAML, aimed at developers, platform engineers, and agents working across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Kubernetes.
read the full Pulumi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or Pulumi more popular?
portainer has 38,526 GitHub stars and Pulumi has 25,705. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and Pulumi free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and Pulumi under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and Pulumi?
portainer is written in TypeScript and Pulumi 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 Pulumi?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,526 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose Pulumi if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.