A self-hosted PaaS gives you the git-push deploys, previews and TLS you get from Vercel or Heroku, on a server you rent for a flat price. You trade a monthly bill that grows with usage for some time spent on upkeep.
1
coolify coollabsio/coolify
The most popular option: a web dashboard for apps, databases and services, naming Vercel, Heroku and Netlify as what it replaces. Apache-2.0.
2
dokploy Dokploy/dokploy
A newer, fast-growing alternative with a similar dashboard, Docker Compose support and multi-server deploys.
3
dokku dokku/dokku
The original ‘mini-Heroku’: command-line driven, Docker-based, MIT-licensed and very stable.
4
caprover caprover/caprover
Docker plus nginx with one-click apps and a web UI. Good for small teams running several services on one machine.
5
kamal basecamp/kamal
From the makers of Basecamp and Rails: zero-downtime deploys of containers to any server, without a dashboard.
6
kubero kubero-dev/kubero
A Heroku-style PaaS on top of Kubernetes, for teams that already run a cluster.
How to choose
Want a dashboard like Vercel’s: Coolify or Dokploy. Prefer the command line: Dokku or Kamal. Already on Kubernetes: Kubero. All of them still leave backups, monitoring and security updates to you.
How we pick: we start from every public GitHub repository with 1,000+ stars, keep the projects that do the job in the title, and read their descriptions and licenses. Stars show community size, not quality, so we also show maintenance status. Nobody paid to be listed.