Best Free Container Orchestration Software of 2025

Google Cloud Platform provides Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), a comprehensive managed solution for orchestrating containers. GKE streamlines the oversight of Kubernetes clusters by automating essential functions like scaling, load balancing, and conducting rolling updates. New customers are welcomed with $300 in free credits, allowing them to experiment with, test, and deploy containerized applications on GCP, helping them grasp the intricacies of container orchestration while keeping initial expenses low. The service offers seamless integration with GCP's monitoring and logging capabilities, delivering valuable insights into the performance and health of applications. Furthermore, GKE facilitates multi-cluster management, enabling organizations to effortlessly deploy containerized applications across various regions. This orchestration solution is perfect for businesses aiming to expand their containerized applications on a global scale while ensuring top-notch reliability and security.

Kasm Workspaces streams your workplace environment directly to your web browser…on any device and from any location. Kasm is revolutionizing the way businesses deliver digital workspaces. We use our open-source web native container streaming technology to create a modern devops delivery of Desktop as a Service, application streaming, and browser isolation. Kasm is more than a service. It is a platform that is highly configurable and has a robust API that can be customized to your needs at any scale. Workspaces can be deployed wherever the work is. It can be deployed on-premise (including Air-Gapped Networks), in the cloud (Public and Private), or in a hybrid.

Kubernetes serves as a powerful foundation for transformative ideas. It enables developers to innovate and deliver projects more rapidly through the premier hybrid cloud and enterprise container solution. Red Hat OpenShift simplifies the process with automated installations, updates, and comprehensive lifecycle management across the entire container ecosystem, encompassing the operating system, Kubernetes, cluster services, and applications on any cloud platform. This service allows teams to operate with speed, flexibility, assurance, and a variety of options. You can code in production mode wherever you prefer to create, enabling a return to meaningful work. Emphasizing security at all stages of the container framework and application lifecycle, Red Hat OpenShift provides robust, long-term enterprise support from a leading contributor to Kubernetes and open-source technology. It is capable of handling the most demanding workloads, including AI/ML, Java, data analytics, databases, and more. Furthermore, it streamlines deployment and lifecycle management through a wide array of technology partners, ensuring that your operational needs are met seamlessly. This integration of capabilities fosters an environment where innovation can thrive without compromise.

Appvia Wayfinder provides a dynamic solution to manage your cloud infrastructure. It gives your developers self-service capabilities that let them manage and provision cloud resources without any hitch. Wayfinder's core is its security-first strategy, which is built on principles of least privilege and isolation. You can rest assured that your resources are safe. Platform teams rejoice! Centralised control allows you to guide your team and maintain organisational standards. But it's not just business. Wayfinder provides a single pane for visibility. It gives you a bird's-eye view of your clusters, applications, and resources across all three clouds. Join the leading engineering groups worldwide who rely on Appvia Wayfinder for cloud deployments. Do not let your competitors leave behind you. Watch your team's efficiency and productivity soar when you embrace Wayfinder!

Portainer Business makes managing containers easy. It is designed to be deployed from the data centre to the edge and works with Docker, Swarm and Kubernetes. It is trusted by more than 500K users. With its super-simple GUI and its comprehensive Kube-compatible API, Portainer Business makes it easy for anyone to deploy and manage container-based applications, triage container-related issues, set up automate Git-based workflows and build CaaS environments that end users love to use. Portainer Business works with all K8s distros and can be deployed on prem and/or in the cloud. It is designed to be used in team environments where there are multiple users and multiple clusters. The product incorporates a range of security features - including RBAC, OAuth integration and logging, which makes it suitable for use in large, complex production environments. For platform managers responsible for delivering a self-service CaaS environment, Portainer includes a suite of features that help control what users can / can't do and significantly reduces the risks associated with running containers in prod. Portainer Business is fully supported and includes a comprehensive onboarding experience that ensures you get up and running.

Ambassador Edge Stack, a Kubernetes-native API Gateway, provides simplicity, security, and scalability for some of the largest Kubernetes infrastructures in the world. Ambassador Edge Stack makes it easy to secure microservices with a complete set of security functionality including automatic TLS, authentication and rate limiting. WAF integration is also available. Fine-grained access control is also possible. The API Gateway is a Kubernetes-based ingress controller that supports a wide range of protocols, including gRPC, gRPC Web, TLS termination, and traffic management controls to ensure resource availability.

Introducing a versatile networking solution that offers connectivity, security, and flexibility at a significantly reduced price. You can easily launch a VNS3 image through various public cloud marketplaces, including AWS, Azure, and GCP. Additionally, we provide a straightforward process for private image sharing, and we are more than happy to share a private image with your account. Furthermore, we can supply a VDI/VDK file that you can seamlessly import into your preferred environment, whether it be VMWare or a secured cloud setting. Our dedicated support team at Cohesive Networks can deliver a license within minutes, ensuring a smooth experience. Upgrading the license for your VNS3 controller is a simple task that can be accomplished through the VNS3 console or the API. An optional feature, the VNS3 Overlay Network, enhances your setup by providing end-to-end encryption, improved performance in most cloud environments, and enhanced IP address mobility across various regions and cloud providers. This overlay network is built on top of the existing networking layers, allowing it to remain functional independently from the underlying hardware and software, although it remains reliant on those native networking layers. In summary, this solution not only streamlines your networking needs but also empowers you with unparalleled flexibility and security.

You can use your favorite debugging software to locally troubleshoot your Kubernetes services. Telepresence, an open-source tool, allows you to run one service locally and connect it to a remote Kubernetes cluster. Telepresence was initially developed by Ambassador Labs, which creates open-source development tools for Kubernetes such as Ambassador and Forge. We welcome all contributions from the community. You can help us by submitting an issue, pull request or reporting a bug. Join our active Slack group to ask questions or inquire about paid support plans. Telepresence is currently under active development. Register to receive updates and announcements. You can quickly debug locally without waiting for a container to be built/push/deployed. Ability to use their favorite local tools such as debugger, IDE, etc. Ability to run large-scale programs that aren't possible locally.

Platform9 Private Cloud Director turns existing servers and storage into a fully featured private cloud. It provides a fast and efficient method for organizations to migrate away from VMware, with minimal disruption. Enterprise IT teams get a familiar virtualization management experience and a true drop-in replacement for VMware vSphere features, offering all critical enterprise features out of the box: Virtual Machine (VM) High Availability, live migration (vMotion equivalent), Dynamic Resource Rebalancing (VMware DRS equivalent), VM cloning, snapshots, templates, software-defined networking, and secure multi-tenancy. Unlike other solutions that may require proprietary hyperconverged infrastructure or re-platforming to Kubernetes, Private Cloud Director works with existing environments—including servers from Dell, HPE, Lenovo, and storage systems from NetApp, Tintri, Pure Storage, and more. Private Cloud Director can be deployed as a fully self-managed solution, a SaaS-managed service, or in air-gapped environments, giving IT teams complete control over their operating model. With Platform9’s free vJailbreak tool, enterprises can perform automated migrations of entire VMware vSphere clusters to Private Cloud Director—including complex VM configurations, multiple datastores, and advanced network policies—at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional approaches. Private Cloud Director supports both VMs and container workloads on a single unified platform, enabling a gradual transition to cloud-native architecture without disrupting current operations. Private Cloud Director can be deployed flexibly as a fully self-managed solution, a SaaS-managed service, or in air-gapped environments.

Bacula Enterprise offers a single platform that provides cloud backup and recovery software for the Modern Data Center. Bacula Enterprise backup & recovery software is ideal for medium and large businesses. It offers unique innovation, modern architecture and business value benefits, as well as low cost of ownership. Bacula Enterprise corporate backup software solution uses unique technologies that increase the interoperability of Bacula Enterprise into many IT environments, such as managed service providers, software vendors, cloud providers, enterprise data centers, and cloud providers. Bacula Enterprise is used by thousands of organizations around the world in mission-critical environments such as NASA, Texas A&M University and Unicredit. Bacula offers more security features than other vendors and advanced hybrid Cloud connectivity to Amazon S3, Google, Oracle, and many others.

Harpoon is an intuitive drag-and-drop tool designed for Kubernetes that allows users to deploy software within seconds. Whether you are just starting your journey with Kubernetes or seeking an efficient way to master it, Harpoon equips you with all the necessary features for effective deployment and configuration of your applications using this leading container orchestration platform, all without writing any code. The platform's visual interface makes it accessible for anyone to launch production-ready software effortlessly. You can easily manage simple or advanced enterprise-level cloud deployments, enabling you to deploy and configure software while autoscaling Kubernetes without the need for code or configuration scripts. With a single click, you can swiftly search for and find any commercial or open-source software available and deploy it to the cloud. Moreover, before launching any applications or services, Harpoon conducts automated security scripts to safeguard your cloud provider account. You can seamlessly connect Harpoon to your source code repository from anywhere and establish an automated deployment pipeline, ensuring a smooth development workflow. This streamlined process not only saves time but also enhances productivity, making Harpoon an essential tool for developers.

Mogenius offers an all-in-one platform that integrates visibility, observability, and automation for effective Kubernetes management. By connecting and visualizing your Kubernetes clusters and workloads, it ensures that the entire team has access to crucial insights. You can easily pinpoint misconfigurations within your workloads and take corrective measures directly through the mogenius interface. The platform streamlines Kubernetes operations with features like service catalogs, enabling developer self-service, and creating ephemeral environments. This self-service capability simplifies the deployment process for developers, allowing them to work more efficiently. Additionally, mogenius helps optimize resource allocation and prevents configuration drift through the use of standardized, automated workflows. By eliminating redundant tasks and promoting the reuse of resources with service catalogs, your team can enhance productivity. Gain complete visibility into your Kubernetes infrastructure and deploy a cloud-agnostic Kubernetes operator for a holistic view of your clusters and workloads. Furthermore, developers can quickly establish local and ephemeral testing environments that replicate the production setup in just a few clicks, ensuring a seamless development experience. Ultimately, mogenius empowers teams to manage their Kubernetes environments with greater ease and efficiency.

Introducing a self-service development platform tailored for your applications, databases, and various tasks. You can begin with a single workload and effortlessly expand to manage hundreds, utilizing either compute or GPUs. Enhance every phase from code push to production with customizable self-service workflows, pipelines, templates, and GitOps practices. Safely launch preview, staging, and production environments while benefiting from built-in observability tools, backups, restoration capabilities, and rollback options. Northflank integrates flawlessly with your preferred tools, supporting any technology stack you choose. Regardless of whether you operate on Northflank’s secure infrastructure or utilize your own cloud account, you will enjoy the same outstanding developer experience, alongside complete control over your data residency, deployment regions, security measures, and cloud costs. By harnessing Kubernetes as its operating system, Northflank provides the advantages of a cloud-native environment without the associated complexities. Whether you opt for Northflank’s straightforward cloud or connect to your GKE, EKS, AKS, or even bare-metal setups, you can achieve a managed platform experience within minutes, thus optimizing your development workflow. This flexibility ensures that your projects can scale efficiently while maintaining robust performance across diverse environments.

Codiac serves as a comprehensive platform designed for large-scale infrastructure management, featuring a cohesive control plane that simplifies aspects such as container orchestration, multi-cluster management, and dynamic configuration without requiring YAML files or GitOps. Its Kubernetes-driven closed-loop system efficiently automates various processes, including workload scaling, the creation of temporary clusters, blue/green and canary deployments, and innovative “zombie mode” scheduling that optimizes costs by powering down inactive environments. Users benefit from immediate ingress, domain, and URL management alongside the effortless integration of TLS certificates through Let’s Encrypt. Each deployment not only produces immutable system snapshots and maintains versioning for instantaneous rollbacks but also ensures compliance through audit-ready features. Security is bolstered by role-based access control (RBAC), finely tuned permissions, and comprehensive audit logs that adhere to enterprise standards, while integration with CI/CD pipelines, real-time logging, and observability dashboards grants complete visibility over all resources and environments, thereby enhancing operational efficiency. All these features work together to create a seamless user experience, making Codiac an invaluable tool for modern infrastructure challenges.

Mesos operates on principles similar to those of the Linux kernel, yet it functions at a different abstraction level. This Mesos kernel is deployed on each machine and offers APIs for managing resources and scheduling tasks for applications like Hadoop, Spark, Kafka, and Elasticsearch across entire cloud infrastructures and data centers. It includes native capabilities for launching containers using Docker and AppC images. Additionally, it allows both cloud-native and legacy applications to coexist within the same cluster through customizable scheduling policies. Developers can utilize HTTP APIs to create new distributed applications, manage the cluster, and carry out monitoring tasks. Furthermore, Mesos features an integrated Web UI that allows users to observe the cluster's status and navigate through container sandboxes efficiently. Overall, Mesos provides a versatile and powerful framework for managing diverse workloads in modern computing environments.

A versatile and straightforward workload orchestrator designed to deploy and oversee both containerized and non-containerized applications seamlessly across on-premises and cloud environments at scale. This efficient tool comes as a single 35MB binary that effortlessly fits into your existing infrastructure. It provides an easy operational experience whether on-prem or in the cloud, maintaining minimal overhead. Capable of orchestrating various types of applications—not limited to just containers—it offers top-notch support for Docker, Windows, Java, VMs, and more. By introducing orchestration advantages, it helps enhance existing services. Users can achieve zero downtime deployments, increased resilience, and improved resource utilization without the need for containerization. A single command allows for multi-region, multi-cloud federation, enabling global application deployment to any region using Nomad as a cohesive control plane. This results in a streamlined workflow for deploying applications to either bare metal or cloud environments. Additionally, Nomad facilitates the development of multi-cloud applications with remarkable ease and integrates smoothly with Terraform, Consul, and Vault for efficient provisioning, service networking, and secrets management, making it an indispensable tool in modern application management.

Aptible provides a seamless solution to implement the essential security measures required for regulatory compliance and customer audits. With its Aptible Deploy feature, you can effortlessly maintain adherence to compliance standards while fulfilling customer audit expectations. The platform ensures that your databases, traffic, and certificates are securely encrypted, meeting all necessary encryption mandates. Data is automatically backed up every 24 hours, and you have the flexibility to initiate a manual backup whenever needed, with a straightforward restoration process that takes just a few clicks. Moreover, comprehensive logs for every deployment, configuration alteration, database tunnel, console operation, and session are generated and preserved. Aptible continuously monitors the EC2 instances within your stacks, looking out for potential security threats such as unauthorized SSH access, rootkit infections, file integrity issues, and privilege escalation attempts. Additionally, the dedicated Aptible Security Team is available around the clock to promptly investigate and address any security incidents that may arise, ensuring your systems remain safeguarded. This proactive approach allows you to focus on your core business while leaving security in expert hands.

The Nebula container orchestrator is designed to empower developers and operations teams to manage IoT devices similarly to distributed Docker applications. Its primary goal is to serve as a Docker orchestrator not only for IoT devices but also for distributed services like CDN or edge computing, potentially spanning thousands or even millions of devices globally, all while being fully open-source and free to use. As an open-source initiative focused on Docker orchestration, Nebula efficiently manages extensive clusters by enabling each component of the project to scale according to demand. This innovative project facilitates the simultaneous updating of tens of thousands of IoT devices around the world with just a single API call, reinforcing its mission to treat IoT devices like their Dockerized counterparts. Furthermore, the versatility and scalability of Nebula make it a promising solution for the evolving landscape of IoT and distributed computing.

Marathon serves as a robust container orchestration platform that integrates seamlessly with Mesosphere’s Datacenter Operating System (DC/OS) and Apache Mesos, ensuring high availability through its active/passive clustering and leader election mechanism, which guarantees continuous uptime. It supports multiple container runtimes, offering first-class integration for Mesos containers utilizing cgroups as well as Docker, making it adaptable to various development environments. Additionally, Marathon facilitates the deployment of stateful applications by allowing persistent storage volumes to be linked to your apps, which is particularly beneficial for running databases such as MySQL and Postgres with storage managed by Mesos. The platform boasts an intuitive and powerful user interface, along with a range of service discovery and load balancing options to suit diverse needs. Health checks are implemented to monitor application performance via HTTP or TCP checks, ensuring reliability. Users can also set up event subscriptions by providing an HTTP endpoint to receive notifications, which can aid in integrating with external load balancers. Lastly, metrics can be queried in JSON format at the /metrics endpoint, while also being capable of integration with popular systems like Graphite, StatsD, DataDog, or scraped using Prometheus, allowing for comprehensive monitoring and analysis of application performance. This combination of features positions Marathon as a versatile tool for managing containerized applications effectively.

Helios serves as a Docker orchestration platform designed for the deployment and management of containers across a wide array of servers. It offers both an HTTP API and a command-line interface, enabling users to interact seamlessly with the servers that host their containers. In addition, Helios maintains a record of significant events within your cluster, capturing details such as deployments, restarts, and version updates. The binary version of Helios is specifically compiled for Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, though it is also compatible with any platform that supports at least Java 8 and a current version of Maven 3. Users can utilize helios-solo to set up a local environment featuring both a Helios master and agent. Helios adopts a pragmatic approach; while it may not aim to address every problem at once, it is committed to delivering solid performance with the features it currently offers. Consequently, certain functionalities, like resource limits and dynamic scheduling, are not yet implemented. At this stage, the focus is primarily on solidifying CI/CD use cases and the related tools, but there are plans to eventually incorporate dynamic scheduling, composite jobs, and other advanced features in the future. The evolution of Helios reflects its dedication to continuous improvement and responsiveness to user needs.

Data-driven computational pipelines. Nextflow allows for reproducible and scalable scientific workflows by using software containers. It allows adaptation of scripts written in most common scripting languages. Fluent DSL makes it easy to implement and deploy complex reactive and parallel workflows on clusters and clouds. Nextflow was built on the belief that Linux is the lingua Franca of data science. Nextflow makes it easier to create a computational pipeline that can be used to combine many tasks. You can reuse existing scripts and tools. Additionally, you don't have to learn a new language to use Nextflow. Nextflow supports Docker, Singularity and other containers technology. This, together with integration of the GitHub Code-sharing Platform, allows you write self-contained pipes, manage versions, reproduce any configuration quickly, and allow you to integrate the GitHub code-sharing portal. Nextflow acts as an abstraction layer between the logic of your pipeline and its execution layer.

It is the only Kubernetes distribution which is simple, solid, and certified. It works on any infrastructure, including bare metal, on-premises or private clouds, edge, IoT or public clouds. It's free and open source. Zero Friction – k0s dramatically reduces the complexity involved in installing and running Kubernetes. Bootstrapping new kube clusters takes only minutes. Developer friction is zero, making it easy for anyone to get started, even if they don't have any special skills. Zero Deps: k0s comes as a single binary that has no host OS dependencies other than the kernel of the host OS. It works with any OS without additional software packages. Any security vulnerabilities or performance problems can be fixed directly within the k0s Distribution. Zero Cost - K0s is free for commercial or personal use and will always be. The source code can be found on GitHub, under Apache 2 license.

Centurion is a deployment tool specifically designed for Docker, facilitating the retrieval of containers from a Docker registry to deploy them across a network of hosts while ensuring the appropriate environment variables, host volume mappings, and port configurations are in place. It inherently supports rolling deployments, simplifying the process of delivering applications to Docker servers within our production infrastructure. The tool operates through a two-stage deployment framework, where the initial build process pushes a container to the registry, followed by Centurion transferring the container from the registry to the Docker fleet. Integration with the registry is managed via the Docker command line tools, allowing compatibility with any existing solutions they support through conventional registry methods. For those unfamiliar with registries, it is advisable to familiarize yourself with their functionality prior to deploying with Centurion. The development of this tool is conducted openly, welcoming community feedback through issues and pull requests, and is actively maintained by a dedicated team at New Relic. Additionally, this collaborative approach ensures continuous improvement and responsiveness to user needs.

Kubernetes can be run in production using the #1 Kubernetes platform. It offers persistent storage, backup, data security, capacity management, and DR. You can easily backup, restore, and migrate Kubernetes applications to any cloud or data centre. Portworx Enterprise Storage Platform provides end-to-end storage, data management, and security for all Kubernetes projects. This includes container-based CaaS and DBaaS as well as SaaS and Disaster Recovery. Container-granular storage, disaster recovery and data security will all be available to your apps. Multi-cloud migrations are also possible. You can easily solve enterprise requirements for Kubernetes data service. Your users can easily access a cloud-like DbaaS without losing control. Operational complexity is eliminated by scaling the backend data services that power your SaaS app. With a single command, add DR to any Kubernetes application. All your Kubernetes apps can be easily backed up and restored.