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Rancher vs Portainer: catalog facts
Rancher	Portainer
Free The open-source platform is available without a license fee. Commercial support is sold…	Freemium Community Edition is free and open source. Business Edition is a paid subscription, free…
Linux, Web, Self-hosted	Windows, Linux, Web, Self-hosted
One console and one identity model across clusters from different providers Built-in catalogue deploys common workloads without writing manifests	One console for Docker, Swarm and Kubernetes across several hosts Deploys Compose stacks and Helm charts from the browser
Substantially heavier than running a single cluster directly Enterprise support and some SUSE add-ons are paid	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
Self-hosted, Web application	Self-hosted, Web application
Open source	Open source
License: Apache-2.0	License not stated
Not stated if an account is needed	Not stated if an account is 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 September 22, 2026

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