About Bex
bex is an open-source alternative to Render, built so that both developers and coding agents control deployments through the same control plane. You push Git changes and bex builds and deploys to HTTPS on infrastructure you own, aiming for the Render, Heroku and Railway experience without operating Kubernetes by hand.
It deploys Dockerfiles or native Go, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Rust and Elixir projects, understands Render-style render.yaml Blueprints and offers a Render-compatible CLI and API. The dashboard, REST, GraphQL, MCP, CLI and Kubernetes resources all operate the same core, with no dashboard-only actions. Service types include web services, private services, workers, cron jobs, static sites, managed Postgres and managed Key Value, with logs, metrics, deploy history, rollbacks, domains, TLS and SSH. The same Go operator runs against Docker-container machines locally or Hetzner machines in production-style clusters, and compatibility claims are tracked in a Render parity ledger.
The README warns that bex is in active development and not ready for production workloads, and that APIs and configuration may change. It is licensed under Apache-2.0.
Key features
- Git push to HTTPS deployments
- Render-style Blueprints and compatible CLI
- Web services, workers, cron jobs and static sites
- Managed Postgres and Key Value
- REST, GraphQL and MCP interfaces
- Kubernetes operator architecture
Good fit for
- →Self-hosted alternative to Render or Heroku
- →Giving AI coding agents a deployment control plane
- Tags
- paas
- kubernetes
- gitops
- deployment
- golang
- render-alternative
- mcp
- self-hosted
Bex: questions and answers
- What is Bex used for?
- bex is an open-source, AI-native alternative to Render that deploys from Git on your own infrastructure through a Kubernetes operator; it is not yet production-ready. It is a good fit for giving AI coding agents a deployment control plane.
- Is Bex open source?
- Yes. Bex is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at bex-co/bex and is written mainly in Go.
- Is Bex free?
- Yes. Bex is open source, so the software itself is free to use. Paid plans are also available, starting at $17.50 per month.
- Can I self-host Bex?
- Yes. Bex can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What is Bex an alternative to?
- Bex is an open-source alternative to Render. Other open-source alternatives to Render include SwiftWave, Coolify and Dokploy.
- Is Bex actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to Bex was on 2 October 2026. The project has 566 stars on GitHub.
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