head to head · open source
teleport vs polaris
teleport has 20,924 GitHub stars, 2,158 forks, 3,262 open issues and last shipped yesterday. polaris has 3,387 stars, 231 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. teleport leads on adoption by 518% (20,924 vs 3,387 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%. teleport 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.
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Side by side
| teleport | polaris | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 231 |
| 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 is an open source, identity aware access plane that provides connectivity, authentication, access control, and audit for servers, Kubernetes clusters, databases, Windows desktops, web applications, and cloud APIs, and it is aimed at platform, security, and infrastructure teams that need to protect access to that infrastructure.
read the full teleport overview →
About polaris
Polaris is an open source policy engine for Kubernetes, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the Kubernetes ecosystem and supports cluster auditing, best practice validation, and a dashboard.
read the full polaris overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is teleport or polaris more popular?
teleport has 20,924 GitHub stars and polaris has 3,387. 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 (20,924 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.