Coolify is an excellent open-source PaaS you run on your own servers. orkestr is the managed version of that idea: same git push workflow, nobody on your team patching servers.
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| orkestr | Coolify | |
|---|---|---|
| Company | EU company (Romania), EU sub-processors only | coolLabs Solutions Kft. (Hungary), open source (Apache-2.0) |
| Where it runs | Germany, Finland, France | Your own servers, anywhere. Coolify Cloud control panel in Germany |
| Free tier | Yes: 1 app + Postgres or Redis, sleeps after 30 min idle | Self-hosted is free; you pay for your servers |
| Pricing model | €15/seat/mo, flat. Compute, 2 add-ons and 1 TB bandwidth included | Free self-hosted, or Cloud $5/mo (2 servers) + $3 per extra server, plus your servers |
| Servers | Managed by orkestr | You choose, pay for and maintain them |
| OS updates & security | Handled by orkestr | Your responsibility (per Coolify docs) |
| Postgres / Redis | Managed add-ons, included in Pro | One-click containers on your server; no clustering or failover |
| Backups | Postgres backups one toggle away | Scheduled backups to S3 for Postgres; not for Redis |
| Builds | 2,000 build min on Pro, Dockerfile or auto-detected | Dockerfile, Docker Compose, Nixpacks, Railpack, images |
| PR previews | PR preview deploys on every plan | Yes |
| Crons | Crons + one-off jobs on Pro | Yes, scheduled tasks |
| Rollbacks | Instant rollbacks on Pro | Image-based, depends on retained images |
Coolify prices from their public pricing pages, last checked . All prices exclude VAT.
Coolify is one of the best open-source projects in this space: a polished dashboard, previews, scheduled tasks, S3 backups and 280+ one-click services, on any server you control. Self-hosted it costs nothing, and it is not a trap: if you stop using it, your containers keep running.
What it does not do is run your servers. Coolify's own documentation lists what stays with you in both its self-hosted and Cloud models: operating system updates, SSH access, firewall rules, DNS, database backups and restore testing, secrets, monitoring and incident response. Its databases are single containers; replication and failover are up to you.
orkestr is the same git push experience with the operations included. We run, patch and monitor the servers, isolate your containers, manage Postgres and Redis, and handle TLS and routing. You pay €15 a month and nobody on your team gets paged because a disk filled up at 3am.
The trade-off is control: on orkestr you cannot SSH into the host, pick your own server or run any of 280 one-click services. If that matters more than your time, Coolify is the right tool.
Being straight about one gap: orkestr does not have an always-on background worker service today. Queue consumers run inside your web process, or as scheduled and one-off jobs. If your app needs a separate long-running worker, factor that in.
One web app with ~1 GB of RAM, always on. A small managed Postgres, a small managed Redis, a few scheduled jobs, ~100 GB of egress a month, one developer.
Coolify Cloud in USD, servers and orkestr in EUR, excl. VAT. The server range is what common EU providers charge for 2 vCPU / 4 GB. Self-hosting Coolify on the same box needs at least 2 GB of that RAM for Coolify itself, and Coolify recommends a separate server for it. Time is the real cost and is not in the number.
We'd rather you pick the right tool than churn in a month. Stay on Coolify if:
Spotted something out of date? Tell us at /contact and we'll fix it.
Free to start, no credit card. Keep Coolify running while you test, flip DNS when you're happy.