Arcane vs Dockhand: Which Docker Manager Should You Choose?

Managing Docker containers doesn’t have to mean Portainer. For years, Portainer was the only serious web UI for Docker, and it worked fine until the licensing changes started pushing people toward paid tiers for basic features. That opened the door for alternatives, and two of them have been getting real attention lately: Arcane and Dockhand.

I deployed both on the same VPS running a mix of compose stacks. This comparison comes from actually using them, not from reading feature lists. Both are solid, but they target different users and make different trade-offs that matter.

Quick comparison

Architecture

These two took very different paths under the hood.

My take on architecture

Here’s what each UI looks like in practice:

Arcane’s Go backend feels snappier for basic container operations. Page loads are fast, API responses come back quickly. Dockhand’s Bun-based stack is no slouch either, but you can feel the difference when clicking through lots of containers. It’s marginal, though. Both are faster than Portainer.

Licensing

This is where you really need to pay attention.

For most self-hosters, both licenses work fine. You’re running it on your own hardware for your own use. The BSL restriction on Dockhand only kicks in if you try to resell it as a service.

But if you’re building something on top of a Docker management UI, or you want to embed it in a product, Arcane gives you more freedom.

Features: where each one wins

Container and compose management

Both handle the basics well. You can start, stop, restart, and remove containers. You can view logs, inspect settings, and manage networks and volumes. Compose stack management works in both. You can deploy, update, and edit compose files from the web UI.

Security features

This is where Dockhand pulls ahead.

Arcane doesn’t have vulnerability scanning, though it does support OIDC/SSO. For a homelab, the security gap between these two is small. For a small business running production workloads, Dockhand’s built-in scanning and hardened OS layer are worth the trade-off of a more restrictive license.

GitOps and automation

Multi-environment management

Both let you manage containers on remote hosts, but the mechanisms differ.

Arcane uses arcane-headless, a lightweight agent. Install it on a remote machine, point it at your main Arcane instance, and you can manage that host from the same dashboard.

Dockhand uses Hawser, which has a trick up its sleeve: NAT traversal. If your remote machine is behind a firewall or NAT, Hawser can still connect without opening ports. That’s genuinely useful for managing machines in different networks.

Maturity and stability

I have to be honest here. Arcane has a significant head start.

Arcane has been around for years. It’s been through many release cycles, edge cases have been found and fixed, and there’s a real community around it. Dockhand shipped its first release two months ago. It’s polished for a v1, but it’s still a v1.

Pricing

Arcane is free. No tiers, no paid features, no “community edition” with missing parts. BSD-3-Clause means you get everything.

Dockhand has a tiered model:

The free tier is genuinely usable. OIDC/SSO is included even at the free level, which is better than what Portainer offers. But if you need RBAC or LDAP, you’re paying enterprise prices.

Community and support

Arcane has the bigger community. More GitHub issues, more discussions, more people contributing. Thirty-five contributors versus seven tells you something about how many people are invested in each project.

Dockhand has gotten press coverage from XDA Developers, The New Stack, and Lawrence Systems. That’s impressive for a project that’s only been public for two months. But coverage and community are different things. When you hit a weird bug at 2am, the size of the community matters more than press mentions.

Both have active Discord/GitHub channels. Response times have been reasonable from both teams in my experience.

Installation

Both are Docker-based installs, which is appropriate for Docker management tools. I’ve written full install guides for both: install Arcane and install Dockhand.

services:
  arcane:
    image: ghcr.io/getarcaneapp/arcane:latest
    container_name: arcane
    ports:
      - "3552:3552"
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - arcane-data:/app/data
      - /opt/docker:/opt/docker
    environment:
      - APP_URL=http://localhost:3552
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - ENCRYPTION_KEY=your-32-byte-encryption-key
      - JWT_SECRET=your-jwt-secret
    restart: unless-stopped
volumes:
  arcane-data:

docker run --rm ghcr.io/getarcaneapp/arcane:latest /app/arcane generate secret

services:
  dockhand:
    image: finsys/dockhand:latest
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock
      - dockhand_data:/app/data
    environment:
      - SECRET_KEY=change-this-to-something-random
volumes:
  dockhand_data:

Both require mounting the Docker socket, which is standard for these tools. If that makes you uncomfortable from a security perspective, both support connecting to remote Docker hosts instead.

Who should pick which

My honest take

If someone asked me which one to install today on a homelab server, I’d say Arcane. It’s more mature, fully open source, and the GitOps integration is excellent. The community is bigger, so when things go wrong, you’ll find help faster.

But I’m watching Dockhand closely. The security features are ahead of anything else in this space at the free tier. OIDC without paying, vulnerability scanning built in, that hardened OS layer. If the team keeps shipping at this pace, and if the project grows its contributor base, it could become the better choice for production use within a year.

For now, Arcane for reliability. Dockhand if you need those security features and can tolerate some rough edges. And if you want something that tries to be the full package, with container management, backups, reverse proxy, monitoring, and multi-node all in one tool, check out UsulNet.

Related articles

• Best Portainer alternatives in 2026 - five Docker management UIs compared
• Install Arcane - full Arcane setup guide with socket proxy and OIDC
• Install Dockhand - full Dockhand setup guide with vulnerability scanning and Hawser
• Install UsulNet - all-in-one Docker management platform with scanning, backups, and multi-node
• Install Dockge - another Docker management UI worth trying
• Best Docker containers for home server - what to run once you’ve picked a manager
• Best self-hosted panels - server management panels compared
• Podman vs Docker - the container engine comparison
• Docker auto-update with Tugtainer - keep containers updated automatically
• Server monitoring tools - monitoring your Docker host