Dokploy vs Pangolin
| Tagline | Self-hosted PaaS to deploy apps and databases with Docker and Traefik | Identity-aware tunneled reverse proxy with WireGuard and access control |
| Category | Self-Hosting Platforms & PaaS | Self-Hosting Platforms & PaaS |
| Replaces | Heroku, Vercel, Netlify, Render | Heroku, Netlify, Render |
| GitHub stars | 37k | 23k |
| Language | TypeScript | Docker |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Self-host difficulty | 2/5 Easy | 3/5 Moderate |
| Deploy options | Docker Docker Compose Manual | Docker Docker Compose |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | 4 days ago | yesterday |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
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.
Pangolin
- Requires a publicly accessible VPS to act as the tunnel endpoint, adding infrastructure overhead
- No managed global edge network; latency depends on your VPS location
- Ecosystem and third-party integrations are much smaller than Cloudflare Tunnel or Tailscale
- Mobile client support and device management are limited compared to Tailscale
Bottom line
Choose Dokploy if you want the lower-effort setup; choose Dokploy for the larger community and ecosystem. Pangolin has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.