Assembly Line

Netlify vs Piku

Netlify and Piku are both paas and app hosting software. Netlify is a commercial product from Netlify. Piku is open source under MIT, with 6.6k GitHub stars.

Which to pick

Pick Netlify when
You run static or framework-built sites and want simple deploys with built-in forms and previews.
Pick Piku when
You deploy small apps to a low-powered machine such as a Raspberry Pi or small VPS where Docker is too heavy.

Side by side

What it does

Hosts static and JAMstack sites with git deploys, preview builds, serverless functions, forms and identity.

A tiny PaaS that enables git push deployments of Python, Node, Go and other apps to your own server, using a Procfile, without Docker.

Watch out

Usage-based charges for bandwidth and builds can surprise you on traffic spikes.

Minimal feature set and a small maintainer team; no container isolation between apps.

Ready for

Production-ready

Usable

Runs as

Cloud service

Self-hosted server

Built with

Not published

Python, uWSGI and nginx

Source code

Closed source, sold by Netlify

Open source, MIT (permissive)

What the license allows

Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.

You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.

How widely known

2.9k Wikipedia readers a month on phones

6.6k GitHub stars

How established

Not known

Established: started 10 years ago, latest release v1.0.0.

Other comparisons

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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.