Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Portainer vs Rancher: What are the differences?
Developers describe Portainer as "Simple management UI for Docker". Portainer is an open-source lightweight management UI which allows you to easily manage your Docker environments Portainer is available on Windows, Linux and Mac. It has never been so easy to manage Docker !. On the other hand, Rancher is detailed as "Open Source Platform for Running a Private Container Service". Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.
Portainer and Rancher can be categorized as "Container" tools.
Some of the features offered by Portainer are:
- Docker management
- Docker UI
- Docker cluster management
On the other hand, Rancher provides the following key features:
- Manage Hosts, Deploy Containers, Monitor Resources
- User Management & Collaboration
- Native Docker APIs & Tools
"Simple" is the top reason why over 29 developers like Portainer, while over 89 developers mention "Easy to use" as the leading cause for choosing Rancher.
Rancher is an open source tool with 11.8K GitHub stars and 1.31K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Rancher's open source repository on GitHub.
According to the StackShare community, Rancher has a broader approval, being mentioned in 87 company stacks & 35 developers stacks; compared to Portainer, which is listed in 23 company stacks and 17 developer stacks.
Pros of Portainer
- Simple35
- Great UI26
- Friendly19
- Easy to setup, gives a practical interface for Docker12
- Because it just works, super simple yet powerful11
- Fully featured11
- A must for Docker DevOps9
- Free and opensource7
- It's simple, fast and the support is great5
- API5
- Template Support4
Pros of Rancher
- Easy to use103
- Open source and totally free79
- Multi-host docker-compose support63
- Load balancing and health check included58
- Simple58
- Rolling upgrades, green/blue upgrades feature44
- Dns and service discovery out-of-the-box42
- Only requires docker37
- Multitenant and permission management34
- Easy to use and feature rich29
- Cross cloud compatible11
- Does everything needed for a docker infrastructure11
- Simple and powerful8
- Next-gen platform8
- Very Docker-friendly7
- Support Kubernetes and Swarm6
- Application catalogs with stack templates (wizards)6
- Supports Apache Mesos, Docker Swarm, and Kubernetes6
- Rolling and blue/green upgrades deployments6
- High Availability service: keeps your app up 24/76
- Easy to use service catalog5
- Very intuitive UI4
- IaaS-vendor independent, supports hybrid/multi-cloud4
- Awesome support4
- Scalable3
- Requires less infrastructure requirements2
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of Portainer
Cons of Rancher
- Hosting Rancher can be complicated10
Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions
What is Portainer?
What is Rancher?
Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
What companies use Portainer?
What companies use Rancher?
Sign up to get full access to all the companiesMake informed product decisions
What tools integrate with Portainer?
What tools integrate with Rancher?
Sign up to get full access to all the tool integrationsMake informed product decisions
Blog Posts
+7
+12
+2