Is Dokku still worth it in 2026?

TL;DR: Yes, if one server is enough and you like the terminal. Dokku is free, MIT-licensed and actively maintained, with 38 releases so far in 2026. It needs 1 GB of RAM, so a $7 server runs it, and it takes the same git push Heroku made famous.

• Pick Dokku if you're leaving Heroku with a Procfile app, you're happy over SSH, and you want database backups and cron without signing up for anything.
• Buy Dokku Pro ($849 once) if you want to keep Dokku and add a web UI on top.
• Pick Coolify if you want a free dashboard or your app is a Docker Compose stack.
• Pick Ployz, which I build, if your coding agent runs your servers and you want deletes to wait for you, or you deploy from GitHub and expect to add and remove servers without running Kubernetes.

Dokku is an open-source, self-hosted Heroku: you install it on one Linux server, add a git remote, and git push builds your app and runs it in Docker behind nginx. It calls itself "the smallest PaaS implementation you've ever seen" (dokku.com). It started in June 2013 and has about 32,000 GitHub stars.

What would your Heroku app cost on Dokku?

Most people looking at Dokku are leaving Heroku, so the calculator starts from a Heroku app. The Heroku row is list price. The Dokku row is the smallest Hetzner server with enough RAM, since Dokku itself costs nothing. The Ployz row is the same server and the same bill, because Ployz's Free plan covers one server; the difference is that its web dashboard comes included.

The RAM figure gives each process the 512 MB a Basic or Standard-1X dyno has (dyno types), 1 GB for Postgres, a little for Redis, and 1 GB for the operating system and Dokku. It's a rule of thumb, not a benchmark. The point holds anyway: one small server costs less than a single $25 Standard-1X dyno.

How does Dokku compare to Heroku?

Dokku copies Heroku's workflow, not its pricing. A Basic web dyno, worker dyno, Essential-1 Postgres and Mini Redis cost $26 a month on Heroku. On a Hetzner CX23 the same stack is about $7.

If your Heroku bill has crept past $50 a month and the app is a normal web app plus a database, Dokku on a $7 server is a big saving for an afternoon of setup. The full Heroku bill at bigger sizes is in Heroku pricing.

I made the same move for a different reason: about $600 for my first month on Laravel Cloud, then $500+ a month on Railway. Today one €80 dedicated server runs everything.

How do you install Dokku?

Two commands from the installation docs, pinned to a version:

wget -NP . https://dokku.com/install/v0.38.31/bootstrap.sh
sudo DOKKU_TAG=v0.38.31 bash bootstrap.sh

It wants "Ubuntu 22.04/24.04/26.04 or Debian 11+ x64", on AMD64 or arm64, with "1GB of system memory, or add swap memory." The docs say the install takes "about 5-10 minutes."

Then create an app on the server, add the server as a git remote on your laptop, and push. Dokku deploys the master branch by default; dokku git:set <app> deploy-branch main changes that (git deploys). Everything else is a command over SSH: dokku config:set for environment variables, dokku ps:scale for process counts, dokku logs for logs.

For the server itself:

Is Dokku still maintained?

Yes. Dokku shipped 38 releases between January and September 2026, four of them in September. Recent releases add features, not only fixes.

How the project pays for itself is public. The maintainer wrote on Hacker News: "Our UI is admittedly a paid product (Dokku itself and it's large ecosystem is already free, I gotta justify my time somehow)" (HN). I think that's an honest model, and it's one reason the free core keeps getting releases.

What does Dokku do well?

Its strengths are the ones it had in 2015, kept sharp. If your app ran on Heroku with a Procfile, it will most likely build on Dokku without changes, and nothing outside your server needs to be up for it to deploy.

• Builds: five builders: Dockerfile, Herokuish (Heroku's buildpacks), Cloud Native Buildpacks via pack, a Lambda builder and a null builder (builder docs). If your repo has a Dockerfile and code a buildpack recognises, the buildpack wins; force the Dockerfile with dokku builder:set <app> selected dockerfile.
• Plugins: official plugins for Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Redis, Memcached, Elasticsearch, CouchDB, RethinkDB, ClickHouse, Meilisearch, NATS, RabbitMQ and Let's Encrypt, all "provided by Dokku maintainers" (plugin list).
• Backups: the Postgres plugin's postgres:backup-schedule backs up to S3 or an S3-compatible store, with optional GPG encryption (dokku-postgres). Many newer tools skip this.
• TLS: the Let's Encrypt plugin renews certificates with a daily cron job (letsencrypt:cron-job --add), and wildcards work through DNS-01 (dokku-letsencrypt).
• Zero-downtime deploys: by default Dokku waits 10 seconds before sending a new container traffic, then keeps the old one for 60 seconds. A healthchecks block in app.json checks an HTTP path or runs a command instead (zero-downtime docs).
• Cron: scheduled jobs go in app.json under a cron key (cron docs).
• Proxies: nginx by default, with Caddy, HAProxy, Traefik and OpenResty as options (proxy docs).

Where does Dokku fall short?

Three places. None of them are bugs; they're the shape Dokku chose.

One server by default. The standard scheduler runs your containers on the Dokku host. ps:scale adds processes, but they all land on the same machine, so if that server is full or down, so is everything on it.

Multi-server means Kubernetes. Since v0.33.0, Dokku's k3s scheduler will "ssh onto the specified server, install k3s, and join it to the current Dokku node in worker mode", with traffic through ingress-nginx (k3s scheduler docs). It's documented and real. But the docs ask for 2 GB of RAM on every node and recommend "an odd number of nodes spread across several availability zones" for the control plane. That's a different weight class from a 1 GB server.

No free web UI. The official UI is Dokku Pro: $849 "for life", a "one-time lifetime license with free upgrades forever — no subscriptions and no per-seat fees" (pro.dokku.com). It covers one production server and two pre-production servers, and the price is marked early-bird while the product is in development. It adds a JSON API, deploys over HTTPS, screens for the official datastore plugins, environment variables, process scaling and live logs. Against a hosted platform I think it pays for itself within a year; against the free dashboards in Coolify and Ployz, it's a real cost.

Two smaller gaps: preview environments mean wiring up Dokku's official GitHub Action, which clones an app per branch with dokku apps:clone. And plugin databases are containers on your server, so failover, replicas and upgrades are yours.

Dokku vs Coolify vs Ployz: which one?

All three are free on one server of your own, so pick by how you want to work. Dokku is a CLI on one server. Coolify is a web dashboard that manages servers over SSH. Ployz is a dashboard and CLI where servers join one private network.

The dashboard is where they differ on cost. Dokku's is $849 once. Coolify's is free if you run it on a server yourself, or $5 a month for two servers on Coolify Cloud. Ployz's is hosted on Ployz Cloud and included in the Free plan for one server; more servers need Pro (coming), $19 with three, then $5 each.

• Dokku wins on footprint, age and independence. It needs nothing but your server, and its Postgres plugin schedules backups to S3.
• Coolify wins on breadth: Compose files, one-click services, four Git providers and a free dashboard. More in my Coolify review and Coolify alternatives.
• Ployz wins when your coding agent runs your servers, or you want a few apps across a few servers without Kubernetes, a dashboard you don't host and a preview for every pull request.

The wider field, including Dokploy, CapRover and Kamal, is in the best self-hosted PaaS, and hosted platform prices are in PaaS pricing.

Where Ployz fits

Ployz is built for coding agents on your own servers. Give Claude Code, Codex or Cursor one prompt, Read ployz.dev/agents.md and deploy this repo to my server., and the agent deploys, reads logs and fixes what broke through ployz mcp. Deleting a service, a volume or a domain waits for you.

With Dokku, the hard step is the second server. That's the other problem I built Ployz for: going from one server to two and retiring the old one should be simple, with no Kubernetes and no three-server minimum.

ployz up --server root@your-server

That installs Ployz on a Linux server with systemd, builds the current directory and gives it an HTTPS address. Node, Python, Ruby, PHP, Go, Rust, Java and Elixir apps need no Dockerfile, so most Heroku apps build as they are.

• More servers: add one with a single command. It joins an encrypted WireGuard network, services reach each other at NAME.internal, and every server serves HTTPS itself, so there's no load balancer to rent.
• A dashboard you don't host: your whole app on one canvas with live status, on Ployz Cloud rather than your server. Edits are staged and reviewed before they deploy. Dokku's web UI is Dokku Pro, at $849.
• Push to deploy from GitHub, with builds on your servers or in your own GitHub Actions and no registry.
• Preview environments for every pull request, built in rather than wired up in a workflow file.
• One-click Postgres, MySQL, Redis and MongoDB, with Heroku-style DATABASE_URL and REDIS_URL variables.
• A restore point for every database: restore it, or move the database to another server with seconds of downtime.
• Monitoring, searchable logs and uptime checks in the same dashboard, where Dokku gives you dokku logs over SSH.
• An AI agent in the dashboard that answers questions about your apps and can restart services, plus ployz mcp for your own coding agent.

Ployz's Free plan covers one server, with the dashboard and custom domains included. Connect your agent and deploy on your own server.

FAQ

Does Dokku have a free web UI?

No. The official UI is Dokku Pro at $849 once, covering one production server and two pre-production servers. The free version is driven entirely by SSH commands. For a free dashboard, Coolify includes one you host yourself, and Ployz's Free plan includes one hosted on Ployz Cloud for one server.

Can Dokku run on more than one server?

Yes, through its k3s scheduler, which installs k3s on each extra server and joins it to a Kubernetes cluster that Dokku manages. Without it, Dokku runs everything on one server.

How much RAM does Dokku need?

1 GB, or less with swap, according to its install docs. Your apps and databases need RAM on top, so 4 GB is a comfortable start.

Does Dokku support Docker Compose?

No. Dokku builds each app from a buildpack or a Dockerfile. For Compose stacks, Coolify or Dokploy run the file directly.

Can Dokku back up my database?

Yes. The official Postgres plugin schedules backups to S3 or an S3-compatible store with postgres:backup-schedule, with optional GPG encryption. Test a restore before you rely on it.

How I checked

I checked every fact on 2026-10-01 against Dokku's docs, its GitHub releases, Dokku Pro's page, and Heroku's, Coolify's, Netcup's and Hetzner's own pages, linked next to each claim, and Coolify's and Dokku Pro's prices again on 2026-10-08. I haven't run Dokku for this article, so there are no install times or memory numbers of my own. I build Ployz, a competitor, so weigh my verdict on it accordingly.

Let your coding agent deploy to your own server with Ployz's Free plan: get started.