Coolify vs Dokploy: an honest comparison

Two projects come up constantly in the self-hosted PaaS conversation: Coolify and Dokploy. Both install on a plain Linux server. Both give you git-based deploys, one-click services, managed databases, and a web UI. Both are free to run on hardware you control.

They are closer on features than most comparison posts admit. The differences that actually matter are maturity, licensing, and how each project thinks about servers. Here is what we found, with sources, so you can decide on facts instead of impressions.

What each one is

Coolify was started in 2021 by Andras Bacsai and is licensed under Apache 2.0. The control plane is a Laravel and Livewire application that runs as a single PHP container. It manages servers over SSH, which means a VPS, bare metal, or a Raspberry Pi are all valid targets.

Dokploy launched in June 2024, created by Mauricio Siu. It is written in TypeScript on Next.js and leans on Docker and Traefik for routing. It covers applications, databases, Docker Compose stacks, and real-time monitoring of CPU, memory, disk, and network with configurable alert thresholds.

Both projects describe themselves as open-source alternatives to Heroku, Vercel, and Netlify. Both mean it.

Maturity and community

Coolify has roughly 60,000 GitHub stars. Dokploy has roughly 36,000. Star counts move constantly and every source reports them from a different snapshot, so treat both figures as ballpark and check the repos yourself.

The interesting number is not the total, it is the rate. Dokploy covered that ground from a standing start in June 2024. That is real adoption, not hype.

Coolify publishes stable releases roughly every 2 to 4 weeks alongside a nightly channel for people who want changes early. The current stable line is v4.1.x. Dokploy ships frequent releases on GitHub and development is visibly active.

Where the age gap shows up in practice: when you hit an obscure problem at 11pm, Coolify's larger install base means someone has probably already posted about it. That is a support-surface advantage, not a code-quality one.

Service catalogs

Coolify ships 280+ one-click services. Dokploy's docs advertise 500+ open source templates, maintained as Docker Compose blueprints in a dedicated repository.

Do not read too much into the raw numbers. The two projects count differently, and both catalogs are Docker Compose templates you can fork, edit, or write from scratch. What matters is whether the specific thing you want is in the list. Search both catalogs for your actual stack before you decide.

Multi-server support

This is where the two designs genuinely diverge.

Coolify connects additional servers over SSH from one control panel, and you place resources on whichever server you want. Deploying the same application across multiple servers behind a load balancer is documented as experimental.

Dokploy splits the problem in two. Remote servers come in two flavours: deployment servers that run your apps, and build servers that only build images and push them to a registry. Each remote server runs its own Docker and its own Traefik and they deliberately do not form a cluster, so one server going down does not affect the others. Separately, Dokploy supports Docker Swarm clustering if you do want to scale one application across nodes.

Dokploy's Swarm support is a genuine differentiator. If multi-node orchestration is on your roadmap, that is a real reason to pick it. One caveat worth knowing up front: Dokploy build servers are currently for applications only and do not support Docker Compose deployments.

Docker Compose and build options

Both platforms treat Docker Compose as a first-class input, not an afterthought.

Coolify's build packs are Nixpacks, a static build pack, Dockerfile, and Docker Compose, with Railpack added as a further option in v4.1. You can also deploy a prebuilt image. Resources are organized as project, then environment, then resource, and each resource runs on a server you have connected.

Dokploy supports Nixpacks, Heroku buildpacks, Paketo buildpacks, Dockerfile, and native Docker Compose.

Databases overlap almost entirely. Both cover PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, and Redis. Coolify backs databases up to any S3-compatible storage. Dokploy does scheduled database backups to S3 and adds volume backups for Docker named volumes, which is useful for apps that keep state outside a database.

Interface and workflow

Coolify organizes everything around servers and projects. Dokploy organizes around projects containing services, with remote servers as a separate section of the dashboard.

Which one feels better is a personal call, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Both install in minutes. Spin up a throwaway VPS, install each, deploy one real app, and delete the one you liked less. That hour will tell you more than any screenshot comparison.

Licensing and what costs money

This is the part worth reading carefully, because it is the clearest difference between the two.

Coolify is Apache 2.0, end of story. Coolify Cloud runs the same open-source codebase, which means nothing is held back from the self-hosted version. Cloud is $5/month for up to two servers with $3/month per additional server, and it exists as a convenience, not as a feature gate.

Dokploy is open core. Code outside the /proprietary directory is Apache 2.0; code inside that directory falls under the separate Dokploy Source Available License, which allows you to read and contribute to the code but requires a paid license to run it in production. Enterprise features need a license key: SSO, SCIM provisioning, custom roles, audit logs, application authentication, whitelabeling, and unlimited concurrent builds (the open-source limit is two concurrent builds per server). Dokploy Cloud starts at $4.50/month per server on Hobby, with Startup from $15/month for three servers.

One detail worth correcting, because older comparisons still repeat it: Dokploy's earlier license was an adapted Apache 2.0 that placed extra restrictions on multi-node support, Docker Compose support, schedules, and preview deployments. Those clauses are gone. Dokploy moved the core to standard Apache 2.0 in January 2026, so multi-node and Docker Compose are plain Apache 2.0 in the self-hosted version. In the announcement, the project also committed to never moving functionality from the open-source license to the paid one.

For a solo developer or a small team running their own apps, none of this changes anything. Both are free and both will do the job. It matters if you need one of the enterprise features.

One caveat on all of this. We are describing what the license texts say, not advising you on how they apply to your business. Both documents are short and linked above. Read them yourself if the details matter to what you are building.

Side by side

Which one fits you

Pick Dokploy if you want Docker Swarm clustering, you like the separation between build servers and deployment servers, or you simply prefer working in a TypeScript codebase you might contribute to. Volume backups are a nice touch if your apps store state outside a database. Just confirm that nothing you need sits behind the enterprise license.

Pick Coolify if you want the larger community, a bigger body of answers to the problems you will actually hit, and a license with no asterisks. Because Coolify Cloud runs the same codebase as the self-hosted build, the question "is this feature behind a paid tier" never comes up.

Neither answer is wrong. Both are actively maintained projects with real users running real production workloads.

If you land on Coolify but don't want to operate it

Self-hosting means you own the updates, the security patches, the backups, and the 2am recovery. That is a fair trade for a lot of developers. For others it is the reason the project never leaves the "someday" list.

MapleDeploy runs managed Coolify on Canadian infrastructure, specifically LunaNode in Toronto. Each customer gets a dedicated VM with their own Coolify instance. Plans are flat CAD per month, starting at $45 for 4 GB RAM and 2 vCPUs, with a 30-day free trial on the Starter and Pro tiers.

It is the same open-source Coolify, so nothing about it locks you in. If you want to see what deploying on Coolify actually looks like first, our step-by-step deployment guide walks through a real project.