ctop vs dive
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted developer tools & git options
— licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one
replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Compare ctop with
choose an app… Excalidraw lazygit Hoppscotch json-server Strapi NocoDB Penpot Windows lazydocker Portainer CE
Compare dive with
choose an app… Excalidraw lazygit Hoppscotch json-server Strapi NocoDB Penpot Windows lazydocker Bruno Streamlit Sentry Self-Hosted Gradio IT-Tools MindsDB Portainer CE Trivy CyberChef Refine just K9s mise Hasura SigNoz Delta Atuin Jujutsu OpenTofu Composio Harbor Swagger UI Reflex Gitleaks MongoDB Hoarder TruffleHog Huly Redoc Difftastic Pulumi asdf semantic-release ChartDB marimo Renovate Opik OpenObserve kubectx Hurl Yaak Wasp Motia Keploy Verdaccio Semgrep NiceGUI Amplication GoReleaser Task Skaffold Scalar AWX pre-commit Gel Semaphore UI Grype Infracost Convex Phabricator Devbox Posting Encore Netboot.xyz Kubeshark Komodo Kubescape Datasette Skopeo SonarQube OSV-Scanner Distribution InstantDB Sourcegraph usql Tilt Omni Tools Terragrunt reviewdog Sentry pgweb Swagger Editor Self-Hosted Syft Atlantis Buildah Checkov Atlas Lefthook Mockoon Flux CD kube-bench Evidently Adminer Manifest draw.io HedgeDoc WireMock Telepresence devenv Watchexec Headlamp Lura Popeye Rundeck Lightdash Redmine Weblate Mongo Express SQLPad DevSpace Mathesar CloudBeaver Prism Mock OpenGrok Flipt Stern Transmission (VPN) Judge0 CE LazySQL actionlint Dependency-Track Tolgee Chartbrew Overmind ATAC Garden Okteto Distribution Registry UI Schemathesis Kometa Git Town Svix SQLMesh DDNS Updater Spectral Baserow Lowdefy GitList Gitu Quay Restfox Gitnuro Plausible CE Process Compose Nexus Repository OSS zot SQLPage Hoverfly Azimutt Traduora Fusio GO Feature Flag Saltcorn Microcks ggshield regclient Featbit Step CI Zoekt DreamFactory Review Board Kubevious RedwoodSDK Accent LiveCodes Databunker Email OAuth2 Proxy Skooner Whoami GlitchTip Smocker Koillection Devpi Kottster autokitteh Anvil App Server Bencher cgit RhodeCode tRPC Panel klaus Phorge Fossil Gitiles Para RSS Graphweaver Drawio Desktop Server WebHook Tester Smallweb Cloudflared SeedSync Coder Envbuilder UI Bakery Mind Traefik Certs Dumper Hello World Hammond Planning Poker Barrage Limbas Flightlog RapidForge qDirStat Moneroblock Postfix Mail Relay Hook0 MDNS Repeater BrowserStack Automate TurboScale Cluster Control Django Unofficial Example Dont-code Services Imposter Moon OpenSpeedTest RepoFlow
Feature ctop dive Category Developer Tools & Git Developer Tools & Git License MIT MIT Language Go Go Setup difficulty Easy Easy Min. RAM 32 MB 128 MB Deployment binary, docker binary, docker GitHub stars ★ 17,811 ★ 54,426 First released 2017 2018 Replaces Docker Desktop Docker Desktop
Why pick each one
Choose ctop if… Released under the MIT license Easy to set up — beginner-friendly First-class Docker support for quick deployment Mature project with 17.8k GitHub stars ctop details Choose dive if… Released under the MIT license Easy to set up — beginner-friendly First-class Docker support for quick deployment Mature project with 54.4k GitHub stars dive details
Frequently asked questions Is ctop or dive better? Neither is universally better. dive has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are ctop and dive free and open-source? Yes. ctop is licensed under MIT and dive under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run ctop and dive with Docker? ctop: yes. dive: yes.