The best open-source self-hosted PaaS options

There are four serious open-source, self-hosted PaaS options in 2026: Coolify (the most complete web dashboard), Dokploy (Swarm-based, with buildpack support), Dokku (lightweight and git-push driven) and CapRover (Swarm-based, one Docker command to install). All four are free to run on your own server. They turn a plain Linux VPS into something that feels like Heroku: push code, get a URL with HTTPS.

Which one fits depends mostly on two things: how much RAM your server has, and whether you want a dashboard or a command line.

#How this list was put together

Every requirement, licence and version below comes from the project's own docs, its LICENSE file or the GitHub API, all read on 2026-09-29. There are no benchmarks and no hands-on testing claims. Nothing here has been measured side by side, and the page doesn't pretend otherwise. Star counts are a rough gauge of community size, not quality.

#At a glance

#1. Coolify: the most complete dashboard

Best for: people who want a full web UI for Git apps, Docker Compose stacks, databases and one-click services, on anything from a VPS to a Raspberry Pi.

Coolify is a control plane. It connects to your servers over SSH and runs everything as standard Docker containers. Its docs say apps keep running if Coolify itself goes down. One instance can manage many servers. Builds can use Nixpacks, Railpack (beta), Static, Dockerfile or Compose, and the proxy is Traefik by default, with Caddy as an option.

The official minimum is 2 cores, 2 GB of RAM and 10 GB of disk on amd64 or arm64 Linux, including 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS. The self-hosted edition has no feature limits, per the pricing page. If you'd rather not run the control plane yourself, Coolify Cloud is $5/month for 2 connected servers plus $3 per extra server.

The catch: the dashboard itself takes a share of a small server's RAM. Heavy builds on the same box can make it unresponsive, as the docs themselves warn. Full profile: /software/coolify.

#2. Dokploy: Swarm underneath, buildpacks on top

Best for: anyone who wants Docker Swarm from day one, or who's moving apps that already build with Heroku buildpacks.

Dokploy's installer sets up Docker, Swarm and Traefik in one line. Build types are Nixpacks, Dockerfile, Heroku Buildpacks and Paketo Buildpacks. It handles Compose (plain or as a Swarm stack), five database engines with scheduled backups, and per-app CPU, memory, disk and network graphs.

The official floor is 2 GB of RAM and 30 GB of disk, and ports 80, 443 and 3000 must be free. Self-hosted, everything (UI, PostgreSQL, Redis, Traefik, your apps) shares one server until you add more.

The licence has one wrinkle worth knowing. The main code is Apache-2.0, but Enterprise features (SSO, SCIM, audit logs, custom roles, whitelabeling) live under a separate source-available licence. Dokploy Cloud starts at $4.50/month per server. Full profile: /software/dokploy.

#3. Dokku: the lightweight, CLI-first option

Best for: a 1 GB VPS, people who are happy in a terminal, and anyone who just wants git push to deploy.

Dokku calls itself "an extensible, open source Platform as a Service that runs on a single server of your choice." You push to it over Git. It builds with a Dockerfile or auto-detects the language with buildpacks, then runs the container. Web processes are routed through nginx, and background processes and cron tasks are managed too. You drive it from the command line over SSH.

Its requirements are the lightest on this list: Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04 or 26.04, or Debian 11+ (x64), on amd64 or arm64, with 1 GB of RAM (or swap) for the Docker scheduler. There's also a K3s scheduler, which needs 2 GB on every node. The install docs say setup takes about 5–10 minutes. It's MIT-licensed, and the latest release is v0.38.31 (2026-09-27), which also makes it the most recently released of the four as of today.

If Coolify and Dokploy feel like too much panel for a small box, start here.

#4. CapRover: one Docker command, Swarm under the hood

Best for: a quick install on a machine that already has Docker, or a small Swarm cluster.

CapRover installs as a single docker run command, with the dashboard on port 3000. It needs Docker 25 or newer. The docs say not to use snap Docker, and that it's tested on Ubuntu 24.04. Images are published for amd64 and arm64. The 32-bit ARMv7 image is no longer published.

Two practical limits stand out in the docs. First, it wants a wildcard DNS record pointing at the server. It works without a domain, but then you get no HTTPS. It also says proxy services like Cloudflare in front of that record aren't officially supported. Second, on RAM, the docs note that builds can use a lot, that 512 MB "might not be enough", and that swap is an optional setup step.

Licensing is Apache-2.0 with an appendix. The paid features of CapRover (as a service) can't be modified, and modifications of free features should be released as free and open source. Latest release: v1.15.4 (2026-08-30).

#Which should you pick?

• 1 GB VPS or old hardware: Dokku. It has the lowest documented requirement and the least overhead to reason about.
• 2–4 GB VPS, want a proper dashboard: Coolify or Dokploy. The head-to-head is at /compare/coolify-vs-dokploy.
• Raspberry Pi: Coolify documents 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS explicitly. Dokku and CapRover both support arm64 too.
• Existing Heroku apps with buildpacks: Dokploy (Heroku Buildpacks) or Dokku (buildpack auto-detection).
• Several servers from the start: any of them can grow. Coolify and Dokploy manage remote servers from one panel, and CapRover and Dokploy are built on Swarm.

#A few things that apply to all of them

• You're now the ops team. OS updates, the firewall, SSH keys and backups of your app data are on you, whichever tool you choose. Coolify's docs say so explicitly, and the same logic holds for the rest.
• Builds are the RAM spike. All four build images on the server by default. If a build knocks your box over, add swap, move builds to CI or a build server, or size up.
• Give the admin panel a domain and HTTPS early. Coolify warns that the first person to reach its registration page becomes admin. CapRover ships with a default password (captain42) that you're told to change.
• Watch it from outside. A monitor on the same server can't tell you that server is down. A small separate instance of Uptime Kuma fixes that.

#Where to run it

All four need a Linux server with a public IP (or a tunnel) for public HTTPS. The VPS shortlist, with RAM, published prices and regions, is at /best/vps-for-self-hosting. If you're here because Heroku's pricing pushed you out, the move-off guide is /alternatives/heroku.

Roundup built from each project's documentation, LICENSE file and GitHub releases. No hands-on testing is claimed.