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Portainer vs DockSTARTer: catalog facts
Portainer	DockSTARTer
Freemium Community Edition is free and open source. Business Edition is a paid subscription, free…	Free Free and open source under the MIT licence.
Windows, Linux, Web, Self-hosted	macOS, Linux, Self-hosted, Command line
One console for Docker, Swarm and Kubernetes across several hosts Deploys Compose stacks and Helm charts from the browser	Installs with a single script on many Linux distributions Catalog of preconfigured home server apps
Role-based access control and several fleet features are Business Edition only The agent needs access to the Docker socket, which is effectively root on the host	Requires Docker to be installed first Must run as a non-root user with sudo permissions
Self-hosted, Web application	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License not stated	License: MIT
Not stated if an account is needed	No account needed
Not stated if it works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 22, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 2, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.