Heroku-style deploys on any Linux server over SSH
Coolify is an open source deployment platform written in PHP (Laravel), and its README pitches it as a self-hostable alternative to Heroku, Netlify and Vercel. It drives any Linux server over SSH, 64-bit Raspberry Pis included. Give it a Git repository, a Dockerfile, a Docker Compose file or a prebuilt image, and it builds the app, runs the container and serves it over HTTPS on your domain. Databases and more than 300 ready-made services launch the same way.
There are two ways to run it: install it yourself, or pay for Coolify Cloud, where the Coolify team hosts the dashboard and your apps stay on your own machines.
Openship does the same job. OpenPanel does a different one: managing web hosting accounts the way cPanel does. The self-hosted PaaS comparison sets Coolify against the other tools on the resources they need and what their paid tiers hold back.
Five build paths, PR previews and a clean exit
- Five ways to build: Nixpacks, Railpack, a Dockerfile, Docker Compose or a prebuilt image, pulled from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or Gitea.
- Deploy on every push: pull request previews, deployment webhooks, and rollback to a retained image.
- Scheduled backups: databases and volumes.
- Build-only servers: since v4.4.0 a server can be limited to builds, including GitHub Actions runners (in beta).
- Scriptable: API, CLI and MCP, with team-based access control and, since v4.4.0, OpenID Connect sign-in.
- Leaving breaks nothing: according to the README, configurations stay on your servers and running resources keep working without Coolify.
Fresh machine advised, v4 stable only since April 2026
The Coolify server runs PostgreSQL, Redis and a reverse proxy. The official install script needs root, installs Docker (version 24 or later, not the snap package) and creates /data/coolify. It then starts Coolify itself, PostgreSQL 15 and Redis 7, and every managed server gets a coolify-proxy container (Traefik by default, or Caddy) on ports 80 and 443. The dashboard also opens ports 8000, 6001 and 6002 until you put it behind a domain.
The documented minimum of 2 cores, 2 GB of RAM and 10 GB of disk leaves your apps out. The install script warns below 30 GB of total disk or 20 GB free. On the localhost server every install starts with, apps share resources with the dashboard, and the docs warn that a build there can make the machine unresponsive. The README recommends one server for Coolify and others for your apps.
Coolify takes over the servers it manages. Linux is the only supported OS. Validating a server can install Docker and restart its service, which is why the docs recommend starting from a fresh machine. Connecting with a user other than root is experimental and still requires passwordless sudo.
Coolify Cloud hosts the dashboard, not your apps. It costs $5 a month for two servers, then $3 for each extra server slot, billed even if it sits empty. The instance runs on Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany; your servers' OS, firewall and app backups remain your job. If the subscription is paused, apps keep running but dashboard access is restricted. The docs say no feature is reserved for Cloud, which adds email alerts and limited email support.
v4 has only been stable since April 27, 2026, after 474 betas. Its release notes admit there are still many bugs, fixed day by day. The 4.3 line got 23 patch releases between August 12 and September 18; v4.4.0 shipped on October 6 and v4.4.1 the next day. A v5 focused on scaling the core is announced with no date.