Software Alternatives & Reviews

Docker Swarm VS k3s

Compare Docker Swarm VS k3s and see what are their differences

Docker Swarm logo Docker Swarm

Native clustering for Docker. Turn a pool of Docker hosts into a single, virtual host.

k3s logo k3s

K3s is a lightweight Kubernetes distribution by Rancher Labs intended for IoT, Edge, and cloud deployments.
  • Docker Swarm Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-11-01
  • k3s Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-11-09

Docker Swarm videos

Kubernetes vs Docker Swarm | Container Orchestration War | Kubernetes Training | Edureka

More videos:

  • Review - Roberto Fuentes – NodeJS with Docker Swarm

k3s videos

Siroko K3s Sun Glasses Unboxing and Review | Big Muscle Gains

More videos:

  • Review - Elecraft K3S Transceiver Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Docker Swarm and k3s)
Developer Tools
52 52%
48% 48
DevOps Tools
48 48%
52% 52
Cloud Computing
30 30%
70% 70
Containers As A Service
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Docker Swarm and k3s

Docker Swarm Reviews

Top 12 Kubernetes Alternatives to Choose From in 2023
With Docker Swarm, you can create and manage a cluster of Docker nodes, enabling the deployment and scaling of containerized applications across a distributed environment.
Source: humalect.com
11 Best Rancher Alternatives Multi Cluster Orchestration Platform
Next, we have Docker Swarm on our alternatives to rancher list. Docker Swarm is a lightweight container orchestration tool that lets you create, deploy and manage containerized applications. It is even one of the most popular container orchestration tools after Kubernetes.
Docker Swarm vs Kubernetes: how to choose a container orchestration tool
Docker Swarm is an open-source container orchestration platform built and maintained by Docker. Under the hood, Docker Swarm converts multiple Docker instances into a single virtual host. A Docker Swarm cluster generally contains three items:
Source: circleci.com

k3s Reviews

We have no reviews of k3s yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, k3s seems to be a lot more popular than Docker Swarm. While we know about 159 links to k3s, we've tracked only 2 mentions of Docker Swarm. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Docker Swarm mentions (2)

  • K8s vs Docker Swarm
    So the thing is support for Swarm was delegated to Mirantis, https://www.mirantis.com/blog/mirantis-will-continue-to-support-and-develop-docker-swarm/ since it was delegated very little was done to move forward swarm _> https://github.com/moby/swarmkit/commits/master , docker swarm itself (docker the company) is deprecated https://github.com/docker-archive/classicswarm . I think because there's no way to... Source: 11 months ago
  • #30DaysOfAppwrite: Docker Swarm Integration
    Docker Swarm is a container orchestration tool built right into the Docker CLI which allows us to deploy our Docker services to a cluster of hosts, instead of just the one allowed with Docker Compose. This is known as Swarm Mode, not to be confused with the classic Docker Swarm that is no longer being developed as a standalone product. Docker Swarm works great with Appwrite as it builds upon the Compose... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago

k3s mentions (159)

  • Linux fu: getting started with systemd
    For self-hosting I've found https://k3s.io to be really good from the SUSE people. Works on basically any Linux distro and makes self-hosting k8s not miserable. - Source: Hacker News / 10 days ago
  • 15 Options To Build A Kubernetes Playground (with Pros and Cons)
    K3S: is a lightweight distribution of Kubernetes that is designed for resource-constrained environments. It is an excellent option for running Kubernetes on a virtual machine or cloud server. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • K3s Traefik Ingress - configured for your homelab!
    I recently purchased a used Lenovo M900 Think Centre (i7 with 32GB RAM) from eBay to expand my mini-homelab, which was just a single Synology DS218+ plugged into my ISP's router (yuck!). Since I've been spending a big chunk of time at work playing around with Kubernetes, I figured that I'd put my skills to the test and run a k3s node on the new server. While I was familiar with k3s before starting this project,... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Building a no-code Helm UI with Windmill - Part 1
    I’ve created a local cluster with K3S and installing Windmill could not be simpler with just one chart to configure, which already has sane defaults to get started. For this demo we will also configure workers to passthrough environment variables to our scripts so that they have access to the Kubernetes API server for later. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Highly scalable Minecraft cluster
    You should be familiar with Kubernetes and have set up a Kubernetes cluster. I recommend k3s. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Docker Swarm and k3s, you can also consider the following products

Kubernetes - Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers

Rancher - Open Source Platform for Running a Private Container Service

k3sup - from Zero to KUBECONFIG in < 1 min 🚀. Contribute to alexellis/k3sup development by creating an account on GitHub.

Docker Compose - Define and run multi-container applications with Docker

Helm.sh - The Kubernetes Package Manager

Portainer - Simple management UI for Docker