About Coolify
Coolify is an open-source, self-hostable alternative to Heroku, Vercel and Netlify. It manages servers, applications and databases on hardware you control, and the only requirement is SSH access, so a VPS, a bare-metal machine or even a Raspberry Pi can serve as a target. Your configuration stays on your own servers, and if you stop using Coolify the resources it deployed keep running.
Applications can be built from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or Gitea using Nixpacks, Railpack, a Dockerfile, Docker Compose or a prebuilt image. Hundreds of one-click services and managed-style databases come with persistent storage and generated credentials. Deployments can run on every push, create pull-request previews, call webhooks and roll back to retained images. Custom domains, automatic HTTPS, reverse proxies and health checks cover networking, while logs, container terminals and resource monitoring help with operations.
Backups, scheduled tasks, secrets, environment variables and notifications are built in, and resources can be managed through the dashboard, an API, a CLI or MCP, with team-based access controls. Coolify is Apache-2.0 licensed and built mainly with PHP; a hosted Coolify Cloud option exists for people who prefer not to run the control plane themselves.
Key features
- Deploy from Git with Nixpacks, Dockerfile or Compose
- Hundreds of one-click services and databases
- Pull-request previews and rollbacks
- Automatic HTTPS and custom domains
- Database and storage backups
- Multi-server management with team access controls
- Dashboard, API, CLI and MCP management
Good fit for
- →Replacing Heroku or Vercel with your own VPS
- →Hosting side projects and internal apps
- →Running databases and services on bare metal
- Tags
- paas
- self-hosted
- deployment
- docker
- heroku-alternative
- vercel-alternative
- devops
- ci-cd
Coolify: questions and answers
- What is Coolify used for?
- Coolify is a self-hostable platform for deploying apps, databases and one-click services to your own servers over SSH, an open-source alternative to Heroku, Vercel and Netlify. It is a good fit for replacing Heroku or Vercel with your own VPS, hosting side projects and internal apps, and running databases and services on bare metal.
- Is Coolify open source?
- Yes. Coolify is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at coollabsio/coolify and is written mainly in PHP.
- Is Coolify free?
- Yes. Coolify is open source, so the software itself is free to use. A managed cloud version is also available, with paid plans from $5 per month.
- Can I self-host Coolify?
- Yes. Coolify can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What is Coolify an alternative to?
- Coolify is an open-source alternative to Heroku, Vercel, Netlify and Render. Other open-source alternatives to Heroku include Dokploy, CapRover and ZaneOps.
- Is Coolify actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to Coolify was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v4.3.23, published on 18 September 2026. The project has 62k stars on GitHub.
Open-source alternatives to Coolify
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Hosting & PaaS
Open-source self-hostable Platform as a Service (PaaS) that simplifies the deployment and
OSSvs Heroku★ 38k
CapRover
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Scalable PaaS (automated Docker+nginx) - aka Heroku on Steroids
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ZaneOps
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A beautiful and fast self-hosted PaaS for deploying and managing web apps, databases, stat
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Dokku
Hosting & PaaS
A docker-powered PaaS that helps you build and manage the lifecycle of applications
MITvs Heroku★ 32k
Kubero
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A free and self-hosted PaaS alternative to Heroku / Netlify / Coolify / Vercel / Dokku / P
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Openship
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Deploy anything, own everything. Self-hostable, AI-powered deployment platform with free S
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SaaS alternatives to Coolify
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Heroku
Hosting & PaaS
Heroku is a cloud platform as a service where developers deploy, run and scale applications on managed containers, with managed data services and AI add-ons.
SaaS
Vercel
Hosting & PaaS
Vercel is a cloud platform for deploying web applications and AI agents, from the company behind Next.js, with a CDN, serverless compute and AI tooling.
SaaS
Netlify
Hosting & PaaS
Netlify is a web hosting and deployment platform for building and shipping sites and apps, with deploy previews, serverless functions and an edge network.
SaaS
Render
Hosting & PaaS
Managed hosting for web services, static sites, databases and cron jobs
SaaS
Railway
Hosting & PaaS
Deploys apps and databases from a repo or image with usage-based billing
SaaS
Fly.io
Hosting & PaaS
Runs containers as micro VMs close to users across regional data centers
SaaS

