Heroku invented the feeling that shipping is one command. You typed git push, waited a minute, and a URL came back with your app behind it, and for years nothing else felt that good. It was also the moment the server stopped being yours.
Coolify is that same command, pointed at a machine you pay for by the month and not by the dyno.
The best open source Heroku alternative for most teams is Coolify: Apache-2.0 licensed, free to self-host on any server you can reach over SSH, with an optional Coolify Cloud at $5 a month for two connected servers (checked Nov 2, 2026). Dokploy is the pick if you want the same job with a multi-server dashboard, Dokku if you want the bare git push and nothing else, and Kamal if you would rather deploy a Docker image from your laptop than install a control panel at all.
What happened to Heroku in 2026
Heroku now runs under what it calls a sustaining engineering model, and it no longer sells Enterprise contracts to new customers. On February 6, 2026, Heroku's chief product officer Nitin T Bhat wrote that “Heroku is transitioning to a sustaining engineering model focused on stability, security, reliability, and support”, with the platform maintained “rather than introducing new features”. Customers who pay by credit card see “no changes to pricing, billing, service, or day-to-day usage”, and “Enterprise Account contracts will no longer be offered to new customers” (Heroku blog). Heroku's October 7, 2026 update still lists new work, including a Postgres Advanced tier and Postgres 18 as the default, so sustaining does not mean frozen.
The prices did not change. On November 2, 2026 Heroku's pricing page lists Eco at $5 a month for a pool of 1,000 dyno hours shared across the Eco dynos on a personal account, which sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity; Basic at $7 per dyno, always on; Standard-1X at $25; Standard-2X at $50; and Performance-M at $250. There is no free plan.
Heroku charges $7 a month for one always-on dyno. Coolify charges $0 for as many apps as your server can hold. The difference is whose pager rings.
The open source Heroku alternatives
Of the 347 deploy and hosting tools in the AppClap catalog (Nov 2, 2026), 64 are open source and 106 can be self-hosted. Five of them replace Heroku for a small team.
Coolify
Coolify is a self-hosted platform that deploys static sites, full-stack applications, databases and more than 360 one-click services to servers you connect over SSH. Self-hosted it is free forever with every feature; Coolify Cloud, where Coolify runs the dashboard and you still bring the machines, is $5 a month for two connected servers plus $3 for each additional one (checked Nov 2, 2026). The licence is Apache-2.0, the repo has about 65,500 GitHub stars, and version 4.5.3 shipped on October 28, 2026 (repo). It is best for a team that wants Heroku's buildpacks and add-on catalogue on a VPS. The honest drawback: you are now the one patching the server and the panel.
Dokploy
Dokploy deploys applications and databases across one or many servers with Nixpacks, Heroku buildpacks or your own Dockerfile, behind Traefik. Self-hosted it is free; Dokploy Cloud is $4.50 a server a month on Hobby, from $15 a month on Startup for up to three servers and unlimited users, with Enterprise on request (checked Nov 2, 2026). The code is Apache-2.0 outside any /proprietary folder, the repo has about 38,200 stars, and version 0.30.10 shipped on October 22, 2026 (repo). It is best for a team that outgrew one box. The drawback: it is still on a 0.x version line.
Dokku
Dokku is the original single-server Heroku clone: a git push to your server builds the app with Heroku-compatible buildpacks and puts it behind nginx. It is free and MIT licensed, with about 32,200 stars and version 0.38.34 released on October 30, 2026 (repo). Dokku Pro, a web interface for it, is sold as a lifetime licence at $849 while the product is in development (checked Nov 2, 2026). Dokku is best for one developer with one server who wants nothing to click. The drawback: there is no dashboard unless you buy one, and one server is the design.
CapRover
CapRover is a Docker Swarm based platform with a web dashboard and a catalogue of one-click apps, and its own repo calls it “Heroku on Steroids”. It is free and Apache-2.0, with about 15,200 stars and version 1.15.5 released on October 23, 2026 (repo). It is best for someone who wants the dashboard first and the command line second. The drawback: Docker Swarm is a smaller world than plain Docker Compose, and most newer tools in this list skipped it.
Kamal
Kamal, from Basecamp, is not a platform at all. It is a command-line tool that builds your Docker image and deploys it to any set of servers over SSH, and its one-line pitch is “Deploy web apps anywhere.” It is free and MIT licensed, with about 14,700 stars and version 2.12.0 released on June 18, 2026 (repo). Kamal is best for a team that already has a Dockerfile and does not want a control panel running on the server. The drawback: databases, backups and any dashboard are your problem, by design.
| Tool | Licence | Self-hosted price | Hosted option | Stars (Nov 2, 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coolify | Apache-2.0 | $0 | Cloud, $5/mo for 2 servers, +$3 each | ~65,500 |
| Dokploy | Apache-2.0, plus a proprietary folder | $0 | Cloud, $4.50 a server/mo | ~38,200 |
| Dokku | MIT | $0 | Dokku Pro UI, $849 lifetime | ~32,200 |
| CapRover | Apache-2.0 | $0 | None | ~15,200 |
| Kamal | MIT | $0 | None | ~14,700 |
| Heroku | Proprietary | n/a | Eco $5, Basic $7 a dyno, Standard-1X $25 | n/a |
Coolify vs Dokploy
Coolify and Dokploy do the same job, and the difference is scope and age. Coolify is older, has nearly twice the stars (about 65,500 to 38,200 on Nov 2, 2026), ships the longer list of one-click services and is on its fourth major version. Dokploy was built around multiple servers from the start and prices its cloud per server at $4.50, against Coolify's $5 for two plus $3 each. Both are Apache-2.0 and free to self-host. Pick Coolify for the catalogue, Dokploy for the multi-server view, and expect to be happy with either.
Is Heroku free?
No. Heroku has no free plan. The cheapest way to run an app on Heroku is the Eco plan: $5 a month for 1,000 dyno hours shared across all the Eco dynos on a personal account, with apps sleeping after 30 minutes of inactivity (checked Nov 2, 2026). An always-on dyno starts at $7 a month on Basic, and Eco is only available to personal accounts. Coolify, Dokploy, Dokku, CapRover and Kamal are free to run; the server underneath them is the bill.
What you actually take on
Heroku's price buys the pager. On Heroku the operating system is patched for you, certificates renew themselves, Postgres is backed up by someone else, and when a dyno dies another one starts. The February notice promised exactly those things: stability, security, reliability and support. For a company with nobody who wants to run a server, that is still a fair trade at $25 a dyno.
The self-hosted path moves every one of those jobs to you. A Coolify or Dokploy install is a panel with root on your servers, and it needs updates, a firewall and backups you have actually restored once. If your deploy platform is the thing between your customers and a 2am outage, the question is not whether the open source tool can do the work. It can. The question is who is awake.
- 1Does someone on the team already run a Linux server, and enjoy it?
- 2Are you paying Heroku for more than three dynos and a database today?
- 3Have you restored a database backup from scratch in the last year?
- 4If Heroku announces another change, would you rather read it closely or not need to?
This series keeps walking down a hallway of paid-app doors: dictation, the deploy platform, the CRM, the login, the mailbox, the visitor book, the back office, the shop window, the appointment book, the workbench. The deploy platform was the second door we opened, back in August with Openship, and we are back at it because the landlord has stopped renovating. We keep writing these at AppClap because a search for software should put the tool you can own next to the famous one, with the price on the page. Our Heroku alternatives page lists everything we track, and if you would rather describe the job, start from deploy my apps to my own server with git push. Thirty seconds on the question is worth it: do you want to rent the deploy, or own the server?
