Software Alternatives & Reviews

k3s VS Portainer

Compare k3s VS Portainer and see what are their differences

k3s logo k3s

K3s is a lightweight Kubernetes distribution by Rancher Labs intended for IoT, Edge, and cloud deployments.

Portainer logo Portainer

Simple management UI for Docker
  • k3s Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-11-09
  • Portainer Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-24

k3s videos

Siroko K3s Sun Glasses Unboxing and Review | Big Muscle Gains

More videos:

  • Review - Elecraft K3S Transceiver Review

Portainer videos

Putting a UI around Docker with Portainer

More videos:

  • Demo - Portainer - The EASIEST WAY to manage your Docker apps! (Overview + Demo)
  • Review - Portainer for Docker Management

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to k3s and Portainer)
DevOps Tools
38 38%
62% 62
Developer Tools
36 36%
64% 64
Cloud Computing
55 55%
45% 45
IT Automation
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 k3s and Portainer

k3s Reviews

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Portainer Reviews

Top 10 Best Container Software in 2022
If you are hunting for a container software that can easily integrate with Ubuntu, then LXC is a reliable option. For semi-managed clustering, you can go for CoreOS. The business purposes solved by Portainer covers querying dockerHub repositories and it is in deed a good tool for beginners.
OpenShift alternatives
The main advantage of Portainer is the flexibility of the software. In addition to Kubernetes, Docker Swarm and Docker can be used to manage clusters and containers. Portainer is based on open-source software and is offered in a freely available community version as well as a paid version with enterprise support. The software can be installed in cloud environments, on edge...
Source: www.ionos.com
7 Best Containerization Software Solutions of 2022
Portainer has one pricing edition that costs $0. A free trial of Portainer is also available if your for more advanced features.
Source: techgumb.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, k3s should be more popular than Portainer. It has been mentiond 159 times since March 2021. 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.

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 / 11 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

Portainer mentions (34)

  • Every Project Deserves its CI/CD pipeline, no matter how small
    Portainer is a really great web UI which will help us to manage all our Docker hosts and Docker Swarm clusters very easily. Let's take a look at its interface where it lists all our stacks available in the swarm. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • paperless-ngx on Synology DS220+
    I've installed the container manager from Synology (Docker) and added portainer.io for better access. Source: 9 months ago
  • Selfhosting Vaultwarden, How Is It Done?
    There are some docker management systems around, portainer.io seems popular, with a GUI (graphical user interface) and configurable templates. Also cloud management systems/cloud hosting seem to offer a GUI to create and manage containers. Source: 10 months ago
  • Dashy - Cant get the widgets to show
    I am really new to the home lab game. I have been using linux heavily since I got my two pi's and set up docker, portainer.io, pi hole, dashy, etc. The problem I am having is no matter how many ways I try to add a widget as simple as a clock to my dashy it just break the whole page. I enabled highlighting in my nano so I could see any errors but I am still not finding what I am doing wrong. Does anybody have... Source: 10 months ago
  • How Developer Portals Abstract away Kubernetes Complexity
    Will be watching you in addition to portainer.io closely. Source: about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

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

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

Docker - Docker is an open platform that enables developers and system administrators to create distributed applications.

Rancher - Open Source Platform for Running a Private Container Service

Kind - Kind is a web-based tool that provides you the features to operate the local kubernetes clusters with the help of a docker container named nodes.

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