head to head · open source
rancher vs osmedeus
rancher has 26,031 GitHub stars, 3,225 forks, 3,371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. osmedeus has 6,638 stars, 1,035 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. rancher leads on adoption by 292% (26,031 vs 6,638 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 | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-04 |
| 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 Rancher is an open source container management platform built for organizations that deploy containers in production. Rancher makes it easy to run Kubernetes everywhere, meet IT requirements, and empower DevOps teams. Stable Release v2.15.1 rancher/rancher:v2.15.1 / rancher/rancher:stable Read the full release notes. To get automated notifications of our latest release, you can watch the announcements category in our forums, or subscribe to the RSS feed Quick Start sudo docker run d restart=unless stopped p 80:80 p 443:443 privileged rancher/rancher Open your browser to Installation See…
read the full rancher overview →
About osmedeus
Osmedeus Osmedeus A Modern Orchestration Engine for Security What is Osmedeus? Osmedeus is a security focused declarative orchestration engine that simplifies complex workflow automation into auditable YAML definitions, complete with encrypted data handling, secure credential management, and sandboxed execution. Built for both beginners and experts, it delivers powerful, composable automation without sacrificing the integrity and safety of your infrastructure. Key Features Declarative YAML Workflows Define pipelines with hooks, decision routing, module exclusion, and conditional branching across multiple runners…
read the full osmedeus overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rancher or osmedeus more popular?
rancher has 26,031 GitHub stars and osmedeus has 6,638. 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 (26,031 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose osmedeus if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.