head to head
Vercel vs Coolify
Coolify is the open source alternative to Vercel — frontend cloud platform for next.js deployment. Here is the honest comparison.
Yes — Coolify is a viable free replacement for Vercel. Coolify is open source under Apache-2.0, written in PHP, with 61,942 GitHub stars, 5,489 forks and 649 open issues; it was last pushed 7 hours ago. Vercel costs from $20, while self-hosting Coolify carries no licence fee — the trade is your operational time instead of a subscription. 1 other open source Vercel alternative is tracked here, led by Dokploy at 37,352 stars. Coolify ranks #1 of 2 tracked open source Vercel alternatives by stars. The tracked set, by adoption: Dokploy (37,352 stars). Replacement criteria on this page: 4 reasons to move to Coolify and 3 reasons to stay on Vercel.
choose Coolify if
- Your Vercel bill is growing with seats or usage
- You need your data in a format and server you control
- Your compliance posture requires auditing the code that touches sensitive data
- You have (or can rent) a server and basic Docker comfort
stick with Vercel if
- You need the polished onboarding and support SLAs of a commercial vendor
- Your team has zero capacity to operate software, even self-hosted-simple
- You depend on a Vercel integration ecosystem that the OSS alternatives have not replicated
Side by side
| Coolify (open source) | Vercel | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free (self-hosted) | $20-$150/user/month |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary |
| Source code | Public, auditable | Closed |
| Self-hosting | Yes — coollabsio/coolify | Cloud only |
| Data ownership | Your server, your format | Vendor's cloud |
| Community | ★ 62K · ⑂ 5.5K | — |
| Built with | PHP | — |
Why people look for a Vercel alternative
About Coolify
Coolify is an open source, self hostable Platform as a Service (PaaS) designed to replace commercial services like Vercel, Heroku, and Netlify. It runs on user provided infrastructure—VPS, bare metal, or Raspberry Pi—and automates deployment, scaling, and management of applications, databases, and services using Docker and Docker Compose. Built with Laravel and PHP, it lives in the infrastructure and operations ecosystem, targeting developers and DevOps teams seeking vendor lock in free control over their deployment stack.
read the full Coolify overview →
Other open source alternatives to Vercel
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Frequently asked questions
Is Coolify a good replacement for Vercel?
Coolify is an open source alternative to Vercel (Frontend cloud platform for Next.js deployment). It is written in PHP and licensed under Apache-2.0, with 61,942 GitHub stars.
Is Coolify free compared to Vercel?
Yes. Coolify is open source — there is no licence fee, and you can self-host it. Vercel is typically a paid subscription, so the trade-off is licence cost against the operational work of running it yourself.
How do I migrate from Vercel to Coolify?
Migration effort depends on the data formats involved. Check Coolify's documentation for import options, and compare the feature table above to confirm the capabilities you depend on are covered before switching.