Coolify is an open-source, self-hostable alternative to Heroku, Netlify and Vercel. You get the push-to-deploy convenience of a cloud platform, running on servers you own. In the README's words: "You only need an SSH connection."
It's on GitHub Trending today with about 64,000 stars. It's licensed under Apache-2.0, and the project pledges no features behind a paywall.
What it does
Point Coolify at a server, whether that's a VPS, a bare-metal box or even a Raspberry Pi, and it becomes a deployment platform. The README's feature list covers most of what you'd pay a PaaS for:
- Deploy any app from GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or Gitea, built with Nixpacks, Railpack, a Dockerfile, Docker Compose or a prebuilt image.
- Run databases and services: managed databases plus more than 360 one-click services, with persistent storage and generated credentials.
- Automate deployments: deploy on every Git push, spin up previews for pull requests, trigger builds by webhook, and roll back to earlier images.
- Handle networking: custom domains, automatic HTTPS, reverse proxying, health checks and container networks.
- Look after it: backups for databases and storage, scheduled tasks, secrets, notifications, logs, and terminals into running containers.
- Script it: a dashboard, an API, a CLI, an MCP server for AI agents, and team-based access controls.
How it works
Coolify is a control panel that manages your servers over SSH and runs your workloads as Docker containers. The recommended setup puts Coolify on one server and deploys your apps to one or more others, so your control plane and your workloads don't compete for resources. A single small server works for tinkering.
The design choice I like most is that it doesn't lock you in. Your configuration lives on your own servers, and the README says that if you stop using Coolify, "your running resources continue to work and remain manageable." Your apps don't stop when the dashboard goes away.
Trying it
Installing it on a supported server is one command:
curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh | bashThe project links straight to the install script so you can read it before piping it into a root shell, which you should. The installation guide covers supported systems and requirements. Once it's running, you open the dashboard in a browser, connect a Git provider or pick a one-click service, and deploy.
If you'd rather not maintain the Coolify server itself, there's Coolify Cloud, a paid hosted control panel that still deploys to your own servers. It adds high availability, email notifications and extra support.
The fine print
- You're the ops team now. Coolify takes care of deploys, certificates and backups, but you still own the servers: OS updates, disk space, firewalls and what happens when hardware dies. That's the trade you make for leaving a managed platform.
- Read the install script. One-line installs are convenient, but the script sets up Docker and system services as root. The README invites you to review it, so take it up on that.
- Donation-funded. Coolify stays free without paywalled features by relying on sponsors, donations and the Cloud offering. That's worth knowing if you're betting a business on it, and it's a good reason to chip in if you do.
Who it's for
Coolify is for indie developers tired of PaaS bills that grow faster than their side projects, small teams who want Heroku-style workflows on a couple of cheap VPSes, homelabbers who want one dashboard for everything they run, and anyone who wants their apps to keep working on their own hardware no matter what happens to a vendor.
The GitHub repo and coolify.io are the places to start, and it's in the resource index now.
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