head to head · open source
teleport vs polaris
teleport has 21,061 GitHub stars, 2,181 forks, 3,262 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. polaris has 3,399 stars, 230 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped yesterday. teleport leads on adoption by 520% (21,061 vs 3,399 stars). teleport is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; polaris is written in Go under Apache-2.0. teleport has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, polaris 7%. polaris was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (audit, cluster, kubernetes), 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
| teleport | polaris | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-20 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 230 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick teleport if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick polaris if
- You want the polaris 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 polaris fits your workflow better
About teleport
Teleport provides connectivity, authentication, access controls and audit for infrastructure. You might use Teleport to: Set up single sign on (SSO) for all of your cloud and on prem infrastructure. Protect access to servers, Kubernetes clusters, databases, Windows desktops, web applications, and cloud APIs without long lived keys or passwords. Establish secure tunnels to reach resources behind NATs and firewalls without VPNs or bastion hosts. Record and audit activity across SSH, Kubernetes, database, RDP, and web sessions. Apply consistent Role Based and Attribute Based Access Control (RBAC/ABAC) across users…
read the full teleport overview →
About polaris
Polaris is an open source policy engine for Kubernetes Polaris is an open source policy engine for Kubernetes that validates and remediates resource configuration. It includes 30+ built in configuration policies, as well as the ability to build custom policies with JSON Schema. When run on the command line or as a mutating webhook, Polaris can automatically remediate issues based on policy criteria. Polaris can be run in three different modes: As a dashboard Validate Kubernetes resources against policy as code. As an admission controller Automatically reject or modify workloads that don't adhere to your…
read the full polaris overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More Compliance & Risk Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Compliance & Risk Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is teleport or polaris more popular?
teleport has 21,061 GitHub stars and polaris has 3,399. teleport has the larger community by that measure.
Are teleport and polaris free?
Both are open source. teleport is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and polaris under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between teleport and polaris?
teleport is written in Go and polaris 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, teleport or polaris?
Choose teleport if you want the larger community (21,061 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose polaris if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.