Dokku vs Dokploy
Dokku and Dokploy are both paas and app hosting software. Dokku is open source under MIT, with 32k GitHub stars. Dokploy is open source under a license set out in its repository, with 38k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Dokku when
- You want Heroku-like git push deployments on your own cheap VPS for small apps.
- Pick Dokploy when
- You want a self-hosted deploy platform with Docker Compose and multi-server support.
Side by side
A Heroku-style PaaS on a single server: git push an app and Dokku builds it with buildpacks or a Dockerfile and runs it in containers, with plugins for databases and TLS.
Deploys apps and databases to your own servers with backups, schedule jobs, rollbacks and notifications.
Designed mainly for one host, so high availability and multi-server scaling need extra work.
You run the server yourself, and code under its proprietary directory is not Apache-licensed.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server and command line
Self-hosted server
Shell, Go and Docker
TypeScript and Docker
Open source, MIT (permissive)
Open source, license unclear on GitHub
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
GitHub could not read the license. Check it in the repository before reusing any code.
32k GitHub stars
38k GitHub stars
Established: started 13 years ago, latest release v0.38.34.
Established: started 2 years ago, latest release v0.31.0.
Other comparisons
More PaaS and app hosting platforms
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.