Dokku vs Dokploy
| Tagline | Docker-powered mini-Heroku you run on a single server | Self-hosted PaaS to deploy apps and databases with Docker and Traefik |
| Category | Self-Hosting Platforms & PaaS | Self-Hosting Platforms & PaaS |
| Replaces | Heroku, Render | Heroku, Vercel, Netlify, Render |
| GitHub stars | 32k | 37k |
| Language | Shell | TypeScript |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Self-host difficulty | 4/5 Involved | 2/5 Easy |
| Deploy options | Docker Manual | Docker Docker Compose Manual |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | yesterday | 4 days ago |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
Dokku
- Primarily single-server; no built-in horizontal scaling or clustering like cloud PaaS.
- CLI-first with no official web UI (community UIs exist but are unofficial).
- No managed CDN/edge, autoscaling, or integrated team management.
- Initial setup and plugin configuration require comfort with the Linux command line.
Dokploy
- Licensing has proprietary portions (not fully permissive for all uses), unlike a pure OSS PaaS.
- No managed edge CDN or global anycast network; you supply the infrastructure.
- Relies on Docker Swarm, which is less actively developed than Kubernetes for large-scale orchestration.
- Observability and team/RBAC features are thinner than commercial platforms.
Bottom line
Choose Dokploy if you want the lower-effort setup; choose Dokploy for the larger community and ecosystem. Dokku has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.