Dokploy vs Pomerium
| Tagline | Self-hosted PaaS to deploy apps and databases with Docker and Traefik | Identity-aware reverse proxy with OAuth2 SSO for securely exposing internal apps |
| Category | Self-Hosting Platforms & PaaS | Self-Hosting Platforms & PaaS |
| Replaces | Heroku, Vercel, Netlify, Render | Heroku, Netlify, Render |
| GitHub stars | 37k | 5k |
| Language | TypeScript | Go |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Self-host difficulty | 2/5 Easy | 4/5 Involved |
| Deploy options | Docker Docker Compose Manual | Docker Docker Compose Kubernetes Manual |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | 4 days ago | 3 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.
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.
Pomerium
- No application deployment or hosting capabilities; purely an access proxy layer
- Policy configuration via YAML can be complex; lacks a full-featured web UI in the open-source edition
- Device posture checking and some enterprise features require the commercial Pomerium Zero/Enterprise tier
- Setup complexity is significantly higher than simpler tools like Nginx Proxy Manager for basic use cases
Bottom line
Choose Dokploy if you want the lower-effort setup; choose Dokploy for the larger community and ecosystem. Pomerium has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.
Pomerium
Identity-aware reverse proxy with OAuth2 SSO for securely exposing internal apps