Docker Machine vs Portainer: What are the differences?

Developers describe Docker Machine as "Machine management for a container-centric world". Machine lets you create Docker hosts on your computer, on cloud providers, and inside your own data center. It creates servers, installs Docker on them, then configures the Docker client to talk to them. On the other hand, Portainer is detailed as "Simple management UI for Docker". Portainer is an open-source lightweight management UI which allows you to easily manage your Docker environments Portainer is available on Windows, Linux and Mac. It has never been so easy to manage Docker !.

Docker Machine and Portainer can be categorized as "Container" tools.

"Easy docker hosts management" is the primary reason why developers consider Docker Machine over the competitors, whereas "Simple" was stated as the key factor in picking Portainer.

Docker Machine is an open source tool with 5.37K GitHub stars and 1.55K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Docker Machine's open source repository on GitHub.

Leftronic, Docker, and DNT are some of the popular companies that use Docker Machine, whereas Portainer is used by Viadeo, Betaout, and Bluestem Brands. Docker Machine has a broader approval, being mentioned in 43 company stacks & 46 developers stacks; compared to Portainer, which is listed in 23 company stacks and 17 developer stacks.