Arcane

Arcane is a self-hosted Docker management dashboard. It has a Go backend and runs as a single container. It talks to the Docker Engine API, usually through the Docker socket or a socket proxy, and gives you one web UI for containers, images, volumes, networks and Compose projects. Compose projects are kept as real files on disk, so the dashboard and the docker compose command on the host work from the same definitions. Other features include live log streaming, an exec shell in the browser, and CPU, memory and network graphs. It scans images for vulnerabilities with Trivy, patches images with Copacetic, and can update images one at a time or in bulk. You can send notifications through Discord, email or Apprise, and you can manage remote hosts through an agent that runs in either Direct or Edge mode. Login options include local accounts, OIDC with group-to-role mapping, passkeys, MFA and role-based access control. There is a REST API documented with OpenAPI 3.1. Recent releases added S3 and Git backups and native Podman support. Arcane is released under the BSD-3-Clause license and the project says it will always be free, with no paid tiers and no features held back. It suits developers, home-lab users and small IT teams who want a lighter, fully open alternative to Portainer for single-host or small-fleet Docker setups. Its main limitation is scope: it does not manage Kubernetes, Swarm support is limited, it does not provide hosting or compute itself, and there is no commercial support or SLA behind it. Because it needs Docker socket access, it has root-equivalent control of the host, so it should run behind a socket proxy and a TLS reverse proxy.