Coolify vs Dokku
Coolify and Dokku compared as self-hosted Heroku-style PaaS: web dashboard vs git-push CLI, build methods, databases and backups, multi-server options, requirements and pricing as of October 2026.
Quick Answer
Coolify is a web-dashboard PaaS (Apache-2.0) that deploys apps, databases and one-click services to any servers you connect over SSH, with Traefik or Caddy, scheduled S3 database backups and pull-request previews built in; it needs 2 CPU cores and 2 GB RAM, or you can use Coolify Cloud from $5/month. Dokku is a MIT-licensed, CLI-first 'mini-Heroku' for one server: you git push, it builds with buildpacks or a Dockerfile, and plugins add Postgres, Let's Encrypt and more on as little as 1 GB RAM. Pick Coolify if you want a UI and many services on several servers; pick Dokku if you want the smallest, scriptable Heroku workflow.
Last updated October 30, 2026. Covers Coolify v4.5.3 (28 Oct 2026) and Dokku v0.38.34 (30 Oct 2026), with current Coolify Cloud and Dokku Pro pricing, install requirements, builders, backups and scaling docs, as of 30 Oct 2026.
| Feature | Coolify | Dokku |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | Apache-2.0 (open source; Cloud runs the same codebase) | MIT (open source); Dokku Pro add-on is commercial |
| Price | Self-hosted free with all features; Cloud $5/month base (2 servers) + $3/month per additional server, 20% off annually | Free; optional Dokku Pro web UI/API $849 one-time lifetime licence (1 production + 2 pre-production servers) |
| Primary Interface | Web dashboard + REST API + MCP tools | CLI over SSH (web UI and JSON API only with Dokku Pro) |
| How You Deploy | Connect a Git source (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Gitea, other Git) or a registry image; auto-deploy via webhooks | git push to the server, or deploy a Docker image or tar/zip archive |
| Build Methods | Nixpacks, Railpack (beta), Static, Dockerfile, Docker Compose; prebuilt Docker images | Herokuish buildpacks, Cloud Native Buildpacks, Dockerfile, Nixpacks, Railpack, Lambda |
| Reverse Proxy / TLS | Traefik by default, Caddy optional, or bring your own; automatic TLS | nginx by default; Caddy, HAProxy, OpenResty or Traefik; TLS via the official Let's Encrypt plugin |
| Managed Databases | One-click PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, ClickHouse, Redis, KeyDB, Dragonfly and more | Official datastore plugins (for example dokku-postgres) linked to apps via env vars |
| Database Backups to S3 | Built in: cron schedules per database, optional S3-compatible upload (not for Redis/KeyDB/Dragonfly) | Per plugin: dokku-postgres has backup-auth, backup and backup-schedule to S3-compatible storage, with optional encryption |
| Pull-Request Preview Deploys | ||
| Multi-Server | Yes: many servers per instance, dedicated build servers, multi-server deploys with an external load balancer (Swarm deprecated) | Single host by default; K3s scheduler can initialise a cluster and add nodes over SSH |
| Minimum Resources | 2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM, 10 GB disk for the Coolify host; amd64 or arm64 | 1 GB RAM with the Docker scheduler (or add swap); 2 GB per node with K3s; amd64 or arm64 |
| Supported OS | Debian/Ubuntu, RHEL family, SUSE, Arch, Alpine, Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit | Ubuntu 22.04/24.04/26.04, Debian 11+ |
| Latest Release (Oct 2026) | v4.5.3 (28 Oct 2026); v4.5.0 on 23 Oct 2026 | v0.38.34 (30 Oct 2026) |
Coolify
Open-source, self-hostable platform with a web dashboard for deploying applications, databases and one-click services to your own servers over SSH, also offered as a managed control plane (Coolify Cloud).
Pros
- Full web dashboard for apps, databases, services, logs, metrics and teams, plus an API and (since v4.5.0) MCP tools for managing resources
- Five build strategies out of the box: Nixpacks, Railpack (beta), Static, Dockerfile and Docker Compose, plus deploying a prebuilt Docker image
- Scheduled, engine-aware database backups for PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, ClickHouse and SQLite with upload to any S3-compatible storage
- Pull-request and merge-request preview deployments with their own domains and env vars, cleaned up when the PR closes
- One control plane manages many servers, including separate build servers and multi-server deployments behind a load balancer
- Self-hosted edition has every feature for free; Coolify Cloud removes the need to host the dashboard yourself from $5/month
Cons
- Heavier than Dokku: the docs ask for 2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM and 10 GB disk for the Coolify instance itself
- Fast release cadence (v4.4.7 to v4.5.3 in a week) means you should read release notes before updating production
- Docker Swarm support is deprecated and will be removed in v5, so there is no built-in cluster scheduler today
- Much of the configuration lives in Coolify's own database and UI rather than in files you keep in Git
Best For
Developers and small teams who want a Vercel/Heroku-like dashboard over their own VPS fleet, with databases, backups and previews handled for them.
Dokku
Docker-powered, MIT-licensed 'mini-Heroku': an extensible open-source PaaS that builds and runs apps on a single server from a git push, managed from the command line over SSH.
Pros
- Smallest footprint here: runs on 1 GB RAM (or less with swap) with the default Docker scheduler
- Heroku-style git push workflow with Procfile, app.json and buildpacks, so Heroku apps often move over with few changes
- Many builders: Herokuish buildpacks, Cloud Native Buildpacks, Dockerfile, Nixpacks, Railpack and a Lambda builder, plus Docker image and tarball deploys
- Everything is a CLI command, which makes it easy to script from CI and to rebuild a server from a shell script
- Swappable proxy (nginx default, Caddy, HAProxy, OpenResty, Traefik) and schedulers, including a K3s scheduler that can add nodes for multi-server clusters
- Mature, MIT-licensed project with over 32,000 GitHub stars and frequent patch releases
Cons
- No web UI in the open-source edition; the official dashboard is Dokku Pro, a paid lifetime licence
- Databases, TLS and backups come from separate plugins you install and configure one by one
- Officially supports only Ubuntu 22.04/24.04/26.04 and Debian 11+
- No built-in pull-request preview environments in the docs we read; teams script them from CI
Best For
Developers who like the Heroku CLI workflow and want a lean, scriptable PaaS on one VPS, or who need K3s-backed scale-out later without changing how they deploy.
Dashboard-first vs CLI-first: how each one feels day to day
The biggest difference is not features but how you drive them. Coolify is a web application. You install it on a server (or use Coolify Cloud), connect servers over SSH, then create projects, applications, databases and services in the browser. Each application has pages for its build pipeline, environment variables, persistent storage, health checks, resource limits, deployments, scheduled tasks and logs. Version 4.5.0, released on 23 October 2026, added a fleet Metrics page, a Canvas dashboard view, a file browser for applications and databases, passkey sign-in and MCP tools so an AI agent can manage resources. There is also an API, so the dashboard is not the only way in, but it is clearly the main one. Dokku is a set of commands. After installing it with the bootstrap script, you add your SSH key, set a global domain and push code. Everything after that is `dokku apps:create`, `dokku config:set`, `dokku domains:add`, `dokku ps:scale` and so on, run over SSH. Dokku's own README calls it a Docker powered mini-Heroku, and that is accurate: if you know the Heroku CLI, you already know most of Dokku. There is no web UI in the open-source edition. The official one, Dokku Pro, is a paid add-on that installs beside Dokku and adds a dashboard, a JSON API, HTTP(S) git push and team management. Pick based on who deploys. A team where designers, juniors or clients need to restart an app will be happier in Coolify. A developer who wants deploys in a CI script and the whole server rebuildable from a shell file will be happier in Dokku.
Builds and deploys: buildpacks, Nixpacks, Dockerfiles and Compose
Both tools detect how to build your code, and both now support the same modern builders. Coolify offers five build strategies: Nixpacks and Railpack (beta) for automatic detection, Static for already-built sites, Dockerfile for a single custom image, and Docker Compose for multi-service definitions where each service can build or pull its own image. You can also skip building and deploy an image from a registry. By default builds run on the deployment server, but Coolify can offload them to a dedicated build server so a heavy Next.js build does not starve the apps already running there. v4.5.0 also added a Smart scan that detects the build pack, Dockerfiles and environment variables for new Git projects, and rollback to registry images of recent deployments. Dokku's builder list is longer and leans on the Heroku heritage. Herokuish runs Heroku's classic buildpacks, the pack builder runs Cloud Native Buildpacks, and there are Dockerfile, Nixpacks (added in 0.32.0), Railpack (added in 0.37.0) and Lambda builders. Nixpacks and Railpack are not bundled: you install their CLIs on the host, and Railpack also needs a BuildKit container. Detection is file-based, for example a `nixpacks.toml` or `railpack.json` in the repo root, and `dokku builder:set` overrides it. Besides git push you can deploy a Docker image or a tar or zip archive. Where this matters: multi-container apps defined in Docker Compose are first-class in Coolify. In Dokku, each process type in a Procfile becomes a container, and services such as Postgres or Redis come from plugins rather than from your Compose file, so a Compose-heavy project usually needs reshaping before it fits Dokku.
Databases, TLS and backups: built in vs plugins
Coolify treats databases as resources you create from the dashboard: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, ClickHouse, Redis, KeyDB and Dragonfly, among others, plus a large catalogue of one-click services. Backups are part of the product. For PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, ClickHouse and SQLite you add a schedule as a cron expression, and each run writes a backup on the database's server and can upload a copy to any S3-compatible bucket. Coolify's docs are refreshingly blunt that Redis, Dragonfly and KeyDB are not covered by this workflow and that a successful backup is not a restore test. TLS is handled by the integrated proxy: Traefik by default, Caddy if you prefer, or Custom (None) if you want to run routing yourself. Dokku keeps the core small and pushes these jobs into official plugins. dokku-postgres creates a Postgres service, links it to an app through environment variables and has commands for backup authentication, one-off backups and scheduled backups to an S3-compatible endpoint, with optional passphrase or GPG public-key encryption. Similar plugins exist for other datastores. TLS comes from the official dokku-letsencrypt plugin, which issues certificates with lego, keeps the app online during validation and renews them once you add its cron job. The proxy is nginx by default, with Caddy, HAProxy, OpenResty and Traefik as alternatives. The result is similar coverage with different effort. In Coolify a backup schedule is a few clicks; in Dokku it is a few commands per service, but those commands live happily in a provisioning script.
One server or many: scaling, clustering and where each breaks
Coolify is designed to manage a fleet. One instance can connect unlimited servers, and the Cloud plan's pricing is literally per connected server. You can deploy different apps to different machines, keep builds on a separate build server, and, for apps that must run across servers, Coolify's docs recommend multi-server deployments behind an external load balancer. What Coolify does not have today is a real cluster scheduler: its experimental Docker Swarm integration is deprecated, existing Swarm deployments keep working on v4, new teams cannot enable it, and v5 is due to replace it with native Compose replicas and Coolify's own scaling. If you need automatic rescheduling of containers when a node dies, Coolify is not that tool yet. Dokku starts as a single-server PaaS. The default docker-local scheduler runs containers on the Dokku host and you scale process types with `ps:scale`. For more, Dokku has a scheduler abstraction, and its K3s scheduler (new in 0.33.0) can initialise a K3s cluster, add server or worker nodes over SSH and deploy the same apps to Kubernetes, with commands for annotations, Helm chart values and KEDA-based autoscaling. That is a powerful escape hatch, but it changes the requirements: every K3s node needs at least 2 GB RAM, and you are now operating Kubernetes underneath. In short: Coolify breaks down when you need a true orchestrator; Dokku breaks down when you need many unrelated servers managed from one pane, and stays strong when one server, or a K3s cluster, is enough.
Cost, requirements and migration
Both are free to self-host. Coolify's self-hosted edition is Apache-2.0 with, in its own words, no limitation or restrictions on features. Coolify Cloud costs $5 per month base, which connects 2 servers, plus $3 per month per additional server, with 20% off when billed annually. Your apps still run on your own servers; Coolify only hosts the control plane, backups of it and updates. The self-hosted Coolify instance needs 2 CPU cores, 2 GB RAM and 10 GB disk on amd64 or arm64; the docs say it can squeeze onto 1 core and 512 MB but do not recommend it, especially if builds run on the same box. Dokku is MIT-licensed and free. It needs 1 GB RAM with the Docker scheduler, or less if you add swap, and supports Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04 and 26.04 and Debian 11+ on amd64 or arm64. The only paid part is Dokku Pro at $849 as a one-time lifetime licence with free upgrades, covering one production server and two pre-production servers, priced as early-bird while it is in development. Migration in either direction is mostly about configuration, not code. Both run Docker containers and both understand Nixpacks, Railpack and Dockerfiles, so builds port easily. What does not port is the platform state: Coolify keeps settings in its database and UI, while Dokku keeps them in its config and plugin directories. Plan to recreate env vars, domains, volumes and database services, dump and restore each database, and cut DNS over per app.
Verdict
Choose Coolify if you want a dashboard: it deploys apps, databases and one-click services to several servers over SSH, ships scheduled S3 database backups and pull-request previews, and gives teammates who never open a terminal a place to see logs and redeploy. Budget 2 CPU cores and 2 GB RAM for the Coolify host, or pay $5/month for Coolify Cloud to run the control plane for you. Choose Dokku if you want the Heroku CLI workflow on one small VPS: git push, buildpacks or a Dockerfile, plugins for Postgres and Let's Encrypt, and every step scriptable, on as little as 1 GB RAM under the MIT licence. Dokku is also the better fit when infrastructure must be rebuilt from a shell script. If you are a solo developer with one box and a terminal habit, start with Dokku; once you run many services across machines or hand deploys to non-CLI teammates, Coolify is the more productive choice.