Komodo vs Portainer vs Dockge: Best Docker Manager (2026)

For years the answer to “what should I use to manage Docker in my homelab” was just “Portainer.” That changed once Portainer moved a set of previously-free, team-oriented features behind its paid Business Edition — and a wave of self-hosters went looking for alternatives. The two names that keep coming up are Komodo and Dockge. Here’s how all three actually compare in 2026 on the things that matter: licensing, what you get free, and which fits which homelab — verified against each project’s own docs and repositories.

The three at a glance

Portainer: still capable, now partly paywalled

Portainer is the broadest of the three — it manages Docker, Swarm, Kubernetes, Podman, and edge devices — and its Community Edition is genuinely free and open-source. The friction is what moved to Business Edition (BE):

• RBAC is BE-only. BE has a full seven-role hierarchy (Administrator, Environment Administrator, Operator, Namespace Operator, Helpdesk, Standard User, Read-Only); CE has only basic single-tier user management.
• SSO/OIDC with provider templates (Microsoft, Google, GitHub; Azure AD, Okta, Ping) and automatic group-to-team mapping is BE-only. In CE, “Custom” is the only OAuth option and automatic group membership can’t be configured.
• Audit logging, advanced GitOps, registry management, and S3 backups are BE features too.

The licensing math: BE is free for up to 3 nodes, renewed yearly at no cost, with the full feature set (one license per company domain). Beyond that, Starter is $99/month ($995/year) and Scale is $199/month ($1,995/year); there’s a non-commercial Home & Student plan at $149/year. For a small homelab the 3-node free BE tier is actually generous — the catch is the per-company-domain limit and that the moment you outgrow 3 nodes commercially, you’re into real money.

A recurring CE complaint worth knowing: Compose stacks created in Portainer’s editor become tied to Portainer, and editing the underlying YAML outside the UI is awkward. That single behavior is why many people prefer the other two.

For currency: Portainer is still by far the most-installed of the three (~38k GitHub stars, more than Komodo and Dockge combined) and the most actively released. It ships on a dual track — pick the LTS line (2.39, released Feb 2026, supported into November 2026) for a homelab you don’t want to babysit, not the short-term STS builds (2.43). None of this is the problem. The paywall line is.

Komodo: open-source, uncapped, more to run

Komodo is the project most directly positioned against Portainer’s licensing. It’s GPL-3.0, written mostly in Rust, and its docs are blunt about it: “There is no limit to the number of servers you can connect… There is no limit to what API you can use for automation… No ‘business edition’ here.”

Architecturally it’s a Core + Periphery model: Komodo Core is the central service (and talks to a database — MongoDB recommended, with FerretDB/Postgres as an alternative), and a lightweight, stateless Periphery agent runs on every managed host, IP-whitelisted, reporting container status, logs, and system usage back to Core. You deploy it with Docker Compose. The payoff is real multi-host fleet management with Git-backed (GitOps) deployments, all free. The cost is operational: you’re now running a Rust service plus a database plus an agent per server — more moving parts than a single container. That footprint is the one honest knock on Komodo in 2026: browse any migration thread and you’ll see “bloat” and “why does it need MongoDB?” alongside the praise. It’s a fair trade for uncapped fleet management, but go in expecting to run a database. At ~11.6k GitHub stars and a steady release cadence (v2.2 landed May 2026) it’s younger than Portainer but has strong momentum and an actively responsive maintainer.

One practical gotcha to know before you commit: Komodo substitutes secrets and variables into compose files using its own bracket syntax, not standard Compose interpolation. If you lean on .env files or portable ${VAR} references, check that your workflow survives the move — it’s the single most-cited friction point from people coming off Portainer.

Dockge: the lightweight Compose manager

Dockge comes from Louis Lam, the creator of Uptime Kuma, who built it after being frustrated with Portainer’s stack management (spinning loaders, unclear errors). It’s MIT-licensed and deliberately narrow: it manages Docker Compose and nothing fancier. The defining feature is that it keeps your compose.yaml editable on disk — it “won’t kidnap your compose files,” so they stay usable with normal docker compose commands outside the UI. You get a reactive web editor, an interactive terminal, a docker run → Compose converter, and multi-agent support since v1.4.

What it deliberately lacks: RBAC, OIDC, vulnerability scanning, and a REST API. That’s the point — it’s a clean UI over Compose, not a platform. At ~23.7k stars it’s the most popular of the three by a wide margin, reflecting how many self-hosters just want exactly this.

The one caveat to weigh honestly in 2026: Dockge’s development has gone quiet. The last tagged release, v1.5, shipped in March 2025 — well over a year ago — and the subreddit now has recurring “Dockge alternatives?” threads from people whose small gripes have piled up with no fixes landing. It still works, it’s simple, and MIT means it can’t be pulled out from under you, but if you want a tool under active iteration, that’s a real point for Komodo or the newer Arcane. If Dockge does exactly what you need today, its stability is a feature; if you were hoping the rough edges would get sanded down, temper that expectation.

Portainer vs Dockge vs Komodo: head-to-head

The profiles above cover each tool on its own. Here are the direct pairwise matchups people actually search for.

Portainer vs Dockge

Portainer is a full platform (Docker, Swarm, Kubernetes, Podman, edge) with a heavier UI; Dockge is a focused Compose-only manager with a lighter one. The deciding factor is usually file ownership: Portainer’s editor tends to tie a stack to Portainer, while Dockge leaves your compose.yaml on disk and editable with plain docker compose. If you run one or two hosts and live in Compose, Dockge wins on simplicity; if you need Kubernetes or Business Edition team features, Portainer wins on breadth.

Portainer vs Komodo

Both do multi-host, but the split is licensing. Portainer gates RBAC, SSO/OIDC, and audit logging behind Business Edition (free only up to 3 nodes); Komodo is fully GPL-3.0 with no business edition, no server cap, and no API cap. Choose Komodo if you want uncapped fleet management and GitOps without a license meter, and accept running a database plus a per-host agent. Choose Portainer if you need its breadth (Kubernetes/Swarm/Podman) or fit inside the free 3-node BE tier.

Komodo vs Dockge

Same open-source spirit — both are fully free — but very different scope. Dockge is a single Node service for Compose on one or two hosts; Komodo is a Rust Core plus a database plus a per-host Periphery agent, built for a fleet with Git-backed deployments. Pick Dockge for a tidy single-host UI, and Komodo when you’ve outgrown one host and want real multi-server automation.

Which should you run?

• One or two hosts, you like Compose, you want it to stay portable → Dockge. Lightest, simplest, your files stay yours.
• A fleet of hosts, you want GitOps and uncapped management, and Portainer’s licensing annoyed you → Komodo. Free and uncapped; accept running a database and per-host agents.
• You genuinely need Kubernetes/Swarm/Podman breadth, or BE team features, and fit the 3-node free tier (or can pay) → Portainer.

Community sentiment in 2026 trends Komodo > Dockge > Portainer for self-hosters, but that ranking is use-case-dependent, not absolute. If you’re just standing up your first stacks, the Docker Compose starter stack guide pairs well with Dockge; if you’re managing Docker across multiple Proxmox nodes, Komodo’s fleet model is the natural fit.

Moving off Portainer without breaking anything

The single most common follow-up question — and one of the top searches on this exact topic — is how to actually switch. The reassuring part: Portainer never owned your containers. It only ever held its own view of the Docker engine, so migrating is additive, not a risky teardown. You install the new tool alongside Portainer and move stacks over one at a time.

The cleanest path, whichever tool you land on, is to get your compose files into Git first (or at least onto disk in a tidy folder tree). Once your stacks are plain compose.yaml files you control, both alternatives adopt them directly and Portainer’s lock-in stops mattering.

• To Dockge is almost trivial: point Dockge at the directory holding your compose files and it picks them up as stacks — the files were already yours. This is why the “Portainer → Dockge → Komodo” path shows up so often in the community: Dockge is the low-friction first step off Portainer.
• To Komodo takes more setup (stand up Core, a database, and a Periphery agent per host), but then you add each stack pointing at its compose file, ideally from your Git repo, and redeploy. Do it one stack at a time, confirm health, then move the next. Leave Portainer running until the last stack is across, then remove it.

The one gotcha that bites people: secrets you injected through Portainer’s UI don’t come along. Portainer stores stack environment overrides in its own database, so those values live nowhere in your compose files. Before you decommission Portainer, export or re-note every override and re-add it as a Komodo variable (remember its bracket syntax) or a mounted .env. Miss one and a stack redeploys with a blank password. Plan the secrets, and the rest of the move is genuinely low-drama.

Other Portainer alternatives: Arcane, Dockhand, Coolify, and Yacht

Komodo and Dockge are the two names that come up most, but the “Portainer alternatives” conversation in 2026 is wider. Four more are worth knowing, along with where each actually fits:

• Arcane — a modern, mobile-friendly Docker UI written in Go, so it ships as a single lean container. It’s BSD-3-Clause licensed with real-time metric graphs and GitOps, and it’s the newest name gaining serious momentum (~5k+ GitHub stars and active development). If you like Dockge but want container-level management and a nicer dashboard, Arcane is the one to try — it’s the tool behind the Dockge vs Arcane searches.
• Dockhand — a security-focused manager (BSL 1.1) built around image vulnerability scanning and safe-pull protection, which scans a new image before it swaps a running container. It’s newer and rougher than Arcane, but it’s the pick if update safety is your priority.
• Coolify — worth calling out because it’s a different category. Coolify is a self-hosted PaaS (a Heroku/Vercel-style, Git-driven deploy platform with 280+ one-click services), not a container-management UI. If your goal is “push to Git and get a running app with SSL and a domain,” reach for Coolify; if it’s “see and control the containers I already run,” that’s Portainer/Dockge/Komodo territory. That category gap is the honest answer to Portainer vs Coolify.
• Yacht — a lightweight, template-driven Docker UI (Docker and Podman) built around simplicity. It’s fine for a single host, but it can’t match Portainer on multi-host management, team access, or Kubernetes — so Portainer vs Yacht really comes down to “simple templates” vs “full platform.”

One more, for completeness: if you’re actually running Kubernetes, Rancher — not Portainer — is the enterprise-grade tool for that, and it’s overkill for a plain-Docker homelab.

The honest verdict

There’s no single winner — there’s a right tool per situation. Dockge is the easy recommendation for most single-host homelabs: light, open, and it respects your files. Komodo is the answer when you’ve outgrown one host and don’t want a license meter on your own infrastructure. Portainer remains the most capable platform and is fine if the free 3-node BE tier covers you or you need Kubernetes — just go in knowing which features are CE and which require paying.

One thing I won’t fake: resource footprint. There’s no reliable, current head-to-head RAM/CPU benchmark across all three, and it varies by version and how many stacks and agents you run. Dockge is lightest by design; Komodo has the largest baseline (Core + database + agents); Portainer is in between. If footprint decides it for you, run each for a day and watch docker stats on your own hardware — and use our Docker RAM planner to size the host before you commit. That’s the only number that’s actually yours.

Sources

• Portainer CE vs BE comparison (RBAC, SSO/OIDC split): https://www.portainer.io/blog/portainer-community-edition-ce-vs-portainer-business-edition-be-which-should-you-install
• Portainer Business Edition pricing: https://docs.portainer.io/faqs/licensing/what-is-the-pricing-for-business-edition
• Portainer 3-nodes-free Business Edition license: https://www.portainer.io/take-3
• Portainer release lifecycle (LTS 2.39 / STS 2.43): https://docs.portainer.io/start/lifecycle
• Komodo project + docs: https://komo.do/docs/setup · https://github.com/moghtech/komodo (GPL-3.0, ~11.6k stars, v2.2, verified July 2026)
• Dockge repository: https://github.com/louislam/dockge (MIT, ~23.7k stars, latest release v1.5 dated March 2025, verified July 2026)
• Portainer CE repository (stars/version): https://github.com/portainer/portainer
• Arcane (Go Docker UI): https://github.com/ofkm/arcane
• Coolify (self-hosted PaaS): https://coolify.io/
• Portainer alternatives roundup (Arcane, Dockhand, Dockge, Komodo): https://www.bitdoze.com/portainer-alternatives/
• Community migration sentiment (r/selfhosted, 2026): “Does it make sense to move from Portainer to Komodo?”, “Switched from Portainer to Dockge, and today to Komodo”, “Dockge alternatives?” threads