head to head · open source
rancher vs puppetry
rancher has 25,924 GitHub stars, 3,221 forks, 3,371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. puppetry has 888 stars, 127 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. rancher leads on adoption by 2,819% (25,924 vs 888 stars). rancher is written in Go under Apache-2.0; puppetry is written in JavaScript under MIT. rancher has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, puppetry 14%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| rancher | puppetry | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 888 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-06-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 127 |
| 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 puppetry if
- You want the puppetry feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and puppetry 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 puppetry
Puppetry is a no code/low code end to end web testing tool built on top of Puppeteer and Jest, aimed at QA engineers, testers, and developers who want to record and manage browser tests through a UI instead of writing scripts — though the project is now officially deprecated and kept only as an example and a piece of its own history.
read the full puppetry overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Orchestration & Scheduling projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Orchestration & Scheduling field.
Frequently asked questions
Is rancher or puppetry more popular?
rancher has 25,924 GitHub stars and puppetry has 888. rancher has the larger community by that measure.
Are rancher and puppetry free?
Both are open source. rancher is licensed under Apache-2.0 and puppetry under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rancher and puppetry?
rancher is written in Go and puppetry in JavaScript. 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 puppetry?
Choose rancher if you want the larger community (25,924 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose puppetry if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.