Portainer vs Drydock
Portainer is a full container management platform with a broad feature set. Drydock is a focused, lightweight update monitor with safety controls that Portainer lacks — automatic rollback, maintenance windows, lifecycle hooks, and free security scanning.
Feature Comparison
Here's how we compare on the features that matter most.
| Feature | Portainer | Drydock |
|---|---|---|
| Project status | Actively maintained | Actively maintained |
| Pricing | Free CE / Paid BE ($$$) | Free, AGPL-3.0 licensed |
| Web UI | Yes | Yes |
| Image update detection | Yes | Yes |
| Auto-update containers | Yes | Yes (monitor-first) |
| Automatic rollback | No | Yes, on health check failure |
| Maintenance windows | No | Yes |
| Lifecycle hooks (pre/post) | No | Yes, with timeout & abort |
| Image backup & dry-run | No | Pre-update backup + dry-run preview |
| Security scanning | No | Trivy + SBOM + cosign (free) |
| Registry providers | Major registries | 23 dedicated integrations |
| Notifications | Slack, Teams (BE only) | 20 native trigger integrations |
| MQTT / Home Assistant | No | Yes |
| Grafana dashboard | No | Yes, importable template |
| OIDC / SSO | Yes | Yes (Authelia, Auth0, Authentik) |
| RBAC | Yes (BE only) | Planned |
| Kubernetes support | Yes | Planned (v2.0.0) |
| Docker Swarm | Yes | Planned (v2.0.0) |
| Web terminal / shell | Yes | Planned |
| Compose templates | Yes | Planned |
| Audit log | Yes (BE only) | Yes (free) |
| Resource footprint | Heavier (~100–200MB RAM) | Lightweight (~80MB RAM) |
| License | Zlib (CE) / Proprietary (BE) | AGPL-3.0 |
Key Differentiators
What we built that Portainer doesn't cover.
Update Safety Controls
Automatic rollback on health check failure, maintenance windows, lifecycle hooks, and dry-run preview. We built these into Drydock because Portainer doesn't offer automatic rollback or these safety primitives.
Free Security Scanning
Drydock bundles Trivy scanning, SBOM generation, and cosign verification at no cost. Portainer has no built-in image or vulnerability scanning in any edition.
No Paywall
Every Drydock feature is free and open source. Portainer gates audit logs, RBAC, and notification integrations behind the paid Business Edition. Portainer has no built-in vulnerability scanning in any edition.
20 Trigger Integrations
Slack, Discord, Telegram, Teams, Matrix, SMTP, MQTT, Kafka, Gotify, NTFY, and more — all free. Portainer CE has no alerting integrations — Slack, Teams, email, and webhook notifications all require the paid Business Edition.
23 Registry Integrations
Dedicated integrations for Docker Hub, GHCR, ECR, GCR, GAR, GitLab, Quay, Harbor, Artifactory, Nexus, and more with per-registry configuration.
Lightweight & Focused
We keep Drydock under 80MB RAM with a single focused purpose. Portainer is a full management platform that typically uses 100–200MB RAM or more.
Using Portainer?
Drydock can run alongside Portainer. Use Portainer for general container management and Drydock for update monitoring with safety controls, security scanning, and broad notification support — all without a paid tier.
$ docker run -d \
--name drydock \
-v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
-p 3000:3000 \
-e DD_ANONYMOUS_AUTH_CONFIRM=true \
codeswhat/drydock # open dashboard — add real auth before exposing thisReady to try Drydock?
No SaaS subscription, no data sent off your host, and we ship updates fast.