Comparisons / Portainer
Comebye vs. Portainer
Portainer Business Edition is the mature incumbent in Docker fleet management — a large plugin ecosystem, Kubernetes support today, and years of production hardening. Comebye is newer and Docker-only for now. Here's the honest trade.
Choose Comebye if: you want RBAC, audit logging, and secrets management without paying for Business Edition, and you're comfortable being an early adopter of a pre-beta product. Choose Portainer if: you need Kubernetes support today, a mature plugin ecosystem, or a vendor with years of production track record.
Portainer BE's list pricing per its own site: Starter $99/mo for up to 15 nodes (~$1,188/yr), Scale $199/mo for up to 35 nodes (~$2,388/yr), free tier capped at 5 nodes. Comebye's Team tier includes 15 nodes in $399/yr with a graduated meter above that — no hard node cap on any paid tier.
| Comebye | Portainer BE | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier node cap | 5 | 5 |
| Price at 15 nodes | $399/yr (Team) | $1,188/yr (Starter) |
| Price at 35 nodes | $759/yr | $2,388/yr (Scale) |
| Node cap per paid tier | none — meter scales | 15 (Starter) / 35 (Scale) |
| RBAC on free tier | yes | no |
| Audit logging on free tier | yes | no |
| Kubernetes support | roadmap (Docker first) | yes, today |
| Plugin/template ecosystem | early | mature |
| Source availability | FSL → Apache-2.0 in 2 yrs | proprietary |
Portainer figures are public list prices as of this writing — verify against portainer.io/pricing before quoting them anywhere that matters; vendors change pricing without notice.