head to head · open source
rancher vs werf
rancher has 26,031 GitHub stars, 3,225 forks, 3,371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. werf has 4,739 stars, 243 forks, 30 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rancher leads on adoption by 449% (26,031 vs 4,739 stars). rancher is written in Go under Apache-2.0; werf is written in Go under Apache-2.0. rancher has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, werf 5%. rancher was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (docker), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | werf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 4.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 243 |
| 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 werf if
- You want the werf 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 werf 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 werf
werf is a CNCF Sandbox CLI tool to implement full cycle CI/CD to Kubernetes easily. werf integrates into your CI system and leverages familiar and reliable technologies, such as Git, Dockerfile, Helm, and Buildah. What makes werf special: Complete application lifecycle management : build and publish container images, test, deploy an application to Kubernetes, distribute release artifacts and clean up the container registry. Ease of use : use Dockerfiles and Helm chart for configuration and let werf handle all the rest. Advanced features : automatic build caching and content based tagging, enhanced resource…
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 werf more popular?
rancher has 26,031 GitHub stars and werf has 4,739. rancher has the larger community by that measure.
Are rancher and werf free?
Both are open source. rancher is licensed under Apache-2.0 and werf under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rancher and werf?
rancher is written in Go and werf 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 werf?
Choose rancher if you want the larger community (26,031 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose werf if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.