Coolify or Dokploy?

Pick Coolify if you want the smaller official footprint (10 GB of disk against Dokploy's 30 GB), documented ARM and Raspberry Pi support, and a codebase under a single Apache-2.0 licence. Pick Dokploy if you want Docker Swarm as the foundation, Heroku or Paketo buildpacks as build options, and per-app resource graphs in the panel.

Both are free to self-host, and both ask for 2 GB of RAM. Neither is a wrong choice for a homelab or a small VPS. The differences below are what should tip it.

A note on "resource usage": no independent, dated benchmark of the two exists that this page could cite, and no measurement has been done here. Everything below comes from each project's own documentation, so read the RAM and disk rows as each vendor's stated minimums, not measured idle usage.

#Quick verdict

#Requirements: what each vendor asks for

Coolify lists 2 CPU cores, 2 GB of RAM, 10 GB of free disk and an amd64 or arm64 CPU. Its docs add that it can run on 1 core, 512 MB and 4 GB of disk, but they don't recommend it. They suggest 1 core and 1 GB as a budget starting point that you upgrade as you grow. The supported OS list is long: Debian, Ubuntu LTS, the Red Hat family, SUSE, Arch, Alpine and 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS.

Dokploy lists at least 2 GB of RAM and 30 GB of disk, and says the specification covers Docker's resource use during builds and prevents system freezes. Ports 80, 443 and 3000 must be free, or the install fails. Its tested distros are Ubuntu 18.04 to 24.04, Debian 10 to 12, Fedora 40, and CentOS 8 and 9. The install page gives no CPU minimum and no architecture list.

What that means for a small VPS: on a 2 GB, 20–25 GB-disk box, Coolify is inside its documented minimums and Dokploy isn't. On a 4 GB, 40 GB-disk box, both are comfortably inside theirs.

#Architecture: where the control plane lives

This is the most useful difference once you get past the spec sheet.

Coolify describes itself as a control plane that connects to servers over SSH. The workloads are ordinary Docker containers, and the docs say they keep running if the Coolify instance goes down. You only lose the dashboard and automation until it's back. One instance can manage many servers, and builds can be moved to a dedicated build server.

Dokploy's own Cloud docs say that self-hosted, everything runs on one machine: the UI, PostgreSQL, Redis, Traefik and your apps. They note that as you scale, the management layer competes with your workloads. Dokploy supports remote servers, Swarm clusters and build servers too, so you can split things up. It just starts all-in-one.

Both offer a paid hosted control plane, so the panel's own overhead sits off your server entirely. More on that under pricing.

#Deploying apps

The two overlap heavily. Both deploy from Git or an image, handle Docker Compose, run common databases with backups, route domains through a proxy with automatic certificates, and offer preview deployments and one-click templates.

The differences are at the edges:

• Build types. Dokploy offers Heroku Buildpacks and Paketo Buildpacks alongside Nixpacks and Dockerfile. That's a real plus if your app already has a Heroku Procfile workflow. Coolify offers Nixpacks, Railpack (beta), Static and Dockerfile builds.
• Proxy choice. Coolify lets you swap Traefik for Caddy, or run no managed proxy at all. Dokploy is built around Traefik, and its features page advertises detailed Traefik configuration.
• Swarm. Dokploy's installer initialises Docker Swarm, and its Compose support covers both plain Compose and Swarm stacks. Coolify can target Swarm for image-based apps via docker stack deploy, but a normal install doesn't assume it.
• Monitoring. Dokploy lists CPU, memory, disk and network graphs per app and per Compose service in its features. If that's a deciding factor, check the current Coolify docs for its equivalent. This page doesn't claim either way.
• Zero downtime. Coolify documents rolling updates for single-container apps and lists what disables them (host port mappings, fixed container names, preview deployments). Dokploy lists zero-downtime deployments and registry-based rollbacks among its plan features.

#Licensing

Coolify's repository is Apache-2.0, and its pricing page says the self-hosted edition has every feature, with no limits.

Dokploy is Apache-2.0 for the main codebase, but anything in a /proprietary directory falls under the Dokploy Source Available License, which allows production use only with a commercial agreement. Per its Enterprise docs, that covers SSO, SCIM, custom roles, audit logs, application authentication and whitelabeling. For a solo developer or a homelab this rarely matters. For a company that needs SSO on the deploy panel, it's the deciding line.

#Pricing

Self-hosting either costs nothing beyond the server. The hosted control planes, as listed on 2026-09-29:

• Coolify Cloud: $5/month covers 2 connected servers, plus $3/month per extra server. The page lists unlimited servers and deployments, and annual billing saves 20%.
• Dokploy Cloud: Hobby at $4.50/month per server (1 user, 2 environments, 1 backup per database). Startup from $15/month for up to 3 servers, then $4.50 per extra server, with unlimited users and backups. Enterprise by quote. Yearly billing saves 20%.

For one server, Dokploy Hobby is slightly cheaper. For two, Coolify Cloud's base price covers both. Beyond that it depends on how many seats and backups you need.

#Before you install either

Both docs flag a few first-hour steps that are easy to miss:

• Use a fresh server. Coolify recommends it to avoid conflicts. Dokploy's install fails outright if ports 80, 443 or 3000 are taken.
• Claim the admin account immediately. Coolify warns that whoever reaches its registration page first becomes the admin. Dokploy's setup page on port 3000 creates the admin account too.
• Back up the secrets. Coolify says to keep /data/coolify/source/.env safe, because its APP_KEY is needed to restore from backup.
• Close the raw port. Once your Dokploy panel has a domain with HTTPS, its docs recommend removing the port 3000 publish.

#So which one?

• Tight VPS, Raspberry Pi or ARM server: Coolify. Its documented minimum disk is lower and arm64 is explicitly supported.
• Coming from Heroku with buildpack-based apps: Dokploy, for the Heroku Buildpacks option.
• Already running Swarm, or planning to: Dokploy.
• You want the whole codebase under one permissive licence: Coolify.
• You don't want to run the panel at all: either Cloud option. Compare them on your server count.

Individual profiles: /software/coolify and /software/dokploy. The rest of the field, including Dokku and CapRover, is at /best/self-hosted-paas. To size a server for either, see /best/vps-for-self-hosting.

Comparison built from each project's documentation, pricing pages and GitHub data. It is not based on a hands-on test.