Coolify vs Vercel
Coolify and Vercel are both paas and app hosting software. Coolify is open source under Apache-2.0, with 66k GitHub stars. Vercel is a commercial product from Vercel Inc.
Which to pick
- Pick Coolify when
- You want push-to-deploy convenience on your own VPS fleet without Kubernetes.
- Pick Vercel when
- You build with Next.js or another modern frontend framework and want preview deploys and a global edge with no ops work.
Side by side
A self-hosted platform for deploying apps, databases and over 360 one-click services to your own servers, like a self-run Heroku or Vercel.
Hosts frontend and full-stack web apps with git-based deploys, preview URLs, serverless and edge functions, built by the makers of Next.js.
Your servers and the Coolify instance become your responsibility, including security updates.
Bandwidth and function usage costs can spike on popular sites, and some Next.js features work best only here.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server and cloud service
Cloud service
PHP, Laravel, Docker, PostgreSQL and Redis
Next.js
Open source, Apache-2.0 (permissive)
Closed source, sold by Vercel Inc.
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
66k GitHub stars
5.5k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Established: started 5 years ago, latest release v4.6.0.
Not known
Other comparisons
More PaaS and app hosting platforms
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.