Self-Hosted PaaS Compared: Coolify vs Dokploy vs Dokku vs CapRover

Published 2026-07-13 · verify current pricing on each provider.

If you like the Heroku or Render workflow — git push and your app is live with HTTPS — but you would rather own the box and pay VPS prices instead of per-service managed pricing, a self-hosted PaaS gives you most of that experience on your own hardware. This guide compares the four most popular open-source options — Coolify, Dokploy, Dokku, and CapRover — honestly, including where each one is annoying, and which VPS makes sense underneath.

What they all have in common

All four turn a plain Linux VPS into an application platform. Under the hood they lean on the same building blocks: Docker for isolation, a reverse proxy (Nginx or Traefik) for routing, and Let’s Encrypt for automatic SSL. They all support building an app straight from a Git repo or a Dockerfile, and they all handle the boring parts — TLS renewal, container restarts, environment variables, subdomains — so you do not hand-roll that yourself.

The differences are in the layer above: how much they do for you, how much they weigh, how polished the UI is, and how the license treats commercial use.

The four at a glance

Version numbers and catalog counts move constantly; treat the table as directional, not precise.

Coolify

Coolify is the most feature-dense of the group and has the largest current momentum. It offers a polished web dashboard, 280+ one-click services (databases, n8n, Ghost, Grafana, Ollama and so on), multiple build strategies (Nixpacks, Dockerfile, Docker Compose, and the newer Railpack builder), preview deployments, and native multi-server management from a single control plane. Recent 2026 releases added structured audit logging and an MCP server for AI-agent-driven deploys.

Tradeoffs. All that capability has weight. Coolify’s idle footprint is the heaviest here — reported around 500–700 MB of RAM (and higher in some setups) plus noticeably higher idle CPU than the others — so 2 GB is a floor and 4 GB is more comfortable. Its rapid release pace occasionally ships breaking changes, so pin versions and read release notes before upgrading. The project also recommends running the Coolify control layer on a server separate from your workloads, which can mean budgeting for a second small VPS. The license is the cleanest of the bunch: fully Apache 2.0 with no commercial-use asterisks. There is also a paid Coolify Cloud that hosts the management dashboard for you while you still bring your own servers — self-hosting the whole thing remains free.

Dokploy

Dokploy is the newest entrant (first released in 2024) and is best described as a leaner, more focused take on the same idea. It uses Traefik for routing, supports Docker Compose and Docker Swarm for multi-node scaling, and stands out for built-in real-time monitoring (CPU, memory, network) with Slack/Discord alerts and scheduled database backups to external storage — features you often bolt on separately elsewhere. Installation is fast and the mental model is clean.

Tradeoffs. Being new is the main caveat: a smaller community, fewer tutorials, and less production mileage than the older tools. The license is also more nuanced than it first appears — the core is Apache 2.0, but a /proprietary directory (covering parts of templates, multi-node, and preview deployments) falls under a source-available license that restricts reselling those features as a service. That is invisible if you are deploying your own apps; it matters if you are an agency planning to offer managed Dokploy hosting to clients. Its idle footprint is light (roughly 350 MB reported), which makes it attractive on smaller boxes.

Dokku

Dokku is the oldest and, for many, the most “Heroku-like” in spirit. It is a CLI-first tool: you git push dokku main and it builds with Herokuish buildpacks, Cloud Native Buildpacks, Nixpacks, Railpack, or a Dockerfile, then runs the container. Databases, Let’s Encrypt, storage, and cron are added via a mature plugin ecosystem. It is MIT-licensed, extremely stable, and the lightest to run — a 1 GB VPS is genuinely workable.

Tradeoffs. There is no official free web UI. Management happens over SSH and the command line, which power users love and GUI-oriented developers do not. A web dashboard exists as the paid Dokku Pro product, and there are community UIs (Wharf, Dokkum, Ledokku) of varying polish. Dokku is also happiest as a single-server tool; it can be clustered but that is not its focus. If you want a click-driven catalog of one-click apps, this is not it — but if you want a rock-solid, scriptable, minimal platform, it is hard to beat.

CapRover

CapRover has been around since 2017 and is the “boring in a good way” option. It runs on Docker Swarm with an Nginx proxy, ships a functional web UI plus a caprover deploy CLI, includes NetData monitoring, and has a community-maintained one-click app catalog of 100+ apps. Swarm means multi-node clustering is available out of the box.

Tradeoffs. Development moves more slowly than Coolify or Dokploy — maintenance and compatibility fixes (e.g. Docker API bumps) continue, but you will not see the same feature velocity, and the UI feels a generation older. Build options are also less flexible: it centers on Dockerfile/captain-definition rather than a rich buildpack menu. For teams that value stability and a proven Swarm setup over the newest features, that steadiness is exactly the appeal.

How much server do you need?

These are approximate, real-world starting points, not hard benchmarks:

Remember the platform’s own overhead eats into that, and Docker image builds are memory-hungry — if builds get OOM-killed, add RAM or build elsewhere and deploy the image.

Which VPS to run it on

The PaaS is only as good as the box under it. A few honest generalizations about popular providers:

Rules of thumb: if you are budget-driven and fine with EU-centric regions, Hetzner is the value leader. If you do heavy container builds, Vultr’s high-frequency compute shortens build times. If you need lots of RAM for databases on the cheap and can tolerate variable CPU, Contabo fits. DigitalOcean and Hostinger cost a bit more but smooth the on-ramp. Any of these works for all four PaaS tools — match the plan to the RAM table above.

Choosing

• Want the most features and a great dashboard, and can spare the RAM? Coolify.
• Want something clean, light, and modern with built-in monitoring, and don’t need to resell it? Dokploy.
• Comfortable in a terminal and want the lightest, most stable, most Unix-y option? Dokku.
• Want a proven, stable Swarm-based platform you rarely have to think about? CapRover.

The honest caveat

Self-hosting a PaaS trades a monthly managed bill for operational responsibility. You own backups, OS patching, security hardening, and the 2 a.m. page when the disk fills or an upgrade breaks the proxy. For a side project or a cost-sensitive fleet of small apps, that trade is usually worth it — a single cheap VPS can host what would be an expensive pile of managed services. For a team where engineering time is the scarce resource and uptime is revenue, a managed platform like Render may still be the cheaper choice once you price in your own hours. Pick the layer of control you actually want to be responsible for.