head to head · open source
rancher vs osmedeus
rancher has 25,922 GitHub stars, 3,222 forks, 3,371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. osmedeus has 6,568 stars, 1,031 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. rancher leads on adoption by 295% (25,922 vs 6,568 stars). rancher is written in Go under Apache-2.0; osmedeus is written in Go under MIT. rancher has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, osmedeus 16%. rancher 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
| rancher | osmedeus | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rancher if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick osmedeus if
- You want the osmedeus feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and osmedeus fits your workflow better
About rancher
Rancher is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Go based open source container management platform for organizations that deploy containers in production and need to run Kubernetes everywhere while meeting IT requirements and empowering DevOps teams.
read the full rancher overview →
About osmedeus
Osmedeus is a security focused declarative orchestration engine written in Go and released under the MIT license. It turns complex security workflow automation into auditable YAML definitions, and it pairs that declarative model with encrypted data handling, secure credential management, and sandboxed execution. The project has been public for roughly eight years, carries about 6,563 stars and 1,030 forks, and lives in the penetration testing, reconnaissance, and attack surface management corner of the open source security ecosystem. It is distributed both as shell installed binaries and as the npm package @j3ssi…
read the full osmedeus overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rancher or osmedeus more popular?
rancher has 25,922 GitHub stars and osmedeus has 6,568. rancher has the larger community by that measure.
Are rancher and osmedeus free?
Both are open source. rancher is licensed under Apache-2.0 and osmedeus under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rancher and osmedeus?
rancher is written in Go and osmedeus 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, rancher or osmedeus?
Choose rancher if you want the larger community (25,922 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose osmedeus if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.