May 26, 2026 (today)
Written by Temps Team
Last updated May 26, 2026 (today)
Coolify is free to self-host forever under the Apache 2.0 license — you only pay for your VPS (~$5/mo). Coolify Cloud starts at $5/month for 2 connected servers, with additional servers at $3/month each. An annual plan saves 20%. Teams require a separate subscription per additional team.
TL;DR: Self-hosted Coolify = $0 software cost (Apache 2.0). Coolify Cloud = $5/mo (2 servers) + $3/mo per extra server, or ~$4/mo billed annually. The license allows unrestricted commercial use. Check the live releases page for the current version.
Related: Full Coolify review 2026 · 5 best Coolify alternatives for self-hosted PaaS
Yes. Self-hosted Coolify is free forever. There are no feature gates, no user limits, no trial periods, and no premium tiers hidden behind a paywall. The full product — all 280+ one-click templates, unlimited servers, unlimited deployments, unlimited team members — is available at no cost under the Apache 2.0 license.
Your only cost is the infrastructure you run it on:
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Coolify software license | $0 (Apache 2.0) |
| VPS for Coolify control plane | ~$5/mo |
| VPS for your applications | ~$5–20/mo per server |
| Total minimum | ~$10–25/mo |
Coolify's official documentation recommends running the Coolify management layer on a dedicated server separate from your workloads. That means budgeting for at least two VPS instances — one for Coolify itself and one for your apps.
Citation Capsule: Coolify's self-hosted pricing is confirmed as "Free Forever" with "no limitation or restrictions" on the official Coolify pricing page (Coollabs, May 2026).
Coolify Cloud is the managed option where Coollabs hosts and maintains your Coolify instance. You still bring your own VPS — Cloud manages the dashboard and control plane, not your application workloads.
| Plan | Price | Servers Included | Extra Servers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud (monthly) | $5/mo | 2 | +$3/mo each |
| Cloud (annual) | ~$4/mo (save 20%) | 2 | +$3/mo each |
Cloud does not host your applications. You supply servers from Hetzner, DigitalOcean, AWS, or any provider. Coolify Cloud manages the control plane that coordinates those servers.
So the realistic total cost for a two-server Cloud setup:
| Component | Monthly |
|---|---|
| Coolify Cloud base (2 servers) | $5 |
| 2× Hetzner CX22 VPS (~€4.85 each) | ~$10 |
| Subtotal — deployment only | ~$15 |
That $15 covers deployments and managed databases. It does not include web analytics, error tracking, session replay, or uptime monitoring. Those tools add $154+/mo if sourced from separate SaaS vendors.
Citation Capsule: Coolify Cloud pricing is $5/month for 2 servers + $3/month per additional server, with 20% annual discount. Source: coolify.io/pricing, verified May 2026.
Coolify uses the Apache License 2.0 — one of the most permissive open-source licenses. Here's what that means for common use cases:
| Use case | Permitted? |
|---|---|
| Personal projects | Yes |
| Commercial SaaS products | Yes |
| Internal company tooling | Yes |
| Modify and redistribute | Yes (with attribution) |
| Use in proprietary software | Yes |
| Build a managed service on top of Coolify | Yes |
Apache 2.0 requires you to retain the original copyright notice and license text if you distribute the software. It does not require you to open-source your own applications that run on Coolify infrastructure.
This is a meaningful distinction from licenses like AGPL or SSPL (used by MongoDB and Elastic), which require you to publish source code if you modify and serve the software as a network service. Coolify's Apache 2.0 has no such network-use provision. You can run a commercial SaaS on Coolify-hosted infrastructure without releasing your source code.
Citation Capsule: Coolify is licensed under Apache License 2.0, verified at the Coolify GitHub repository. The license permits commercial use, modification, and proprietary applications without copyleft obligations.
Coolify supports multiple teams in both self-hosted and Cloud versions. The pricing model differs significantly between the two:
Self-hosted teams: Unlimited teams, unlimited members, at no additional cost. You can create separate teams per client or project, each with distinct server access and permissions, all within a single Coolify instance.
Cloud teams: Each additional team requires a separate Cloud subscription. If you manage a primary organization plus three client workspaces, you need four subscriptions ($5/mo each = $20/mo minimum).
| Setup | Self-hosted cost | Cloud cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 team, any members | $0 software | $5/mo |
| 3 teams, any members | $0 software | $15/mo |
| 5 teams, any members | $0 software | $25/mo |
For freelancers and agencies managing multiple client environments, this per-team model makes Cloud costs multiply quickly. Self-hosting sidesteps it entirely.
Coolify ships frequent point releases throughout the v4 beta cycle. For the latest release tag, see the Coolify releases page. Progress toward v4 stable is tracked on the GitHub milestones page.
The v4 series is a complete rewrite from Coolify v3. Changes that matter for 2026 deployments:
Coolify has over 55,900 GitHub stars as of May 2026, making it the most-starred self-hosted PaaS on GitHub.
Coolify announced a v5 rewrite. As of May 2026, the v5 milestone on GitHub has no issues assigned and no public timeline. The v4 beta series continues shipping actively. There is no announced migration path from v4 to v5 yet — something to factor into long-term infrastructure planning.
All three platforms are open-source with self-hosting available. The cost differences surface when you account for everything a production app needs — not just deployment, but also observability.
| Coolify | Dokploy | Temps | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-host license | Free (Apache 2.0) | Free (Apache 2.0) | Free |
| Cloud managed tier | $5/mo | Not available | ~$6/mo |
| Built-in analytics | No | No | Yes |
| Built-in error tracking | No | No | Yes |
| Built-in session replay | No | No | Yes |
| Built-in uptime monitoring | No | No | Yes |
| Deployment cost (Cloud) | ~$15/mo | ~$10/mo | ~$6/mo |
| Total with full observability | ~$169/mo | ~$175/mo | ~$6/mo |
The "total with full observability" row assumes adding Sentry ($26/mo), Plausible ($9/mo), LogRocket ($99/mo), and Better Uptime ($20/mo) to Coolify and Dokploy. Temps bundles all of those in a single binary.
Related: 5 best Coolify alternatives (2026)
Coolify's pricing is genuinely hard to beat for deployment-only use cases: free forever to self-host, or $5/month managed Cloud. The Apache 2.0 license allows unrestricted commercial use with no copyleft obligations. Multi-team setups on Cloud scale at $5/team — self-hosting avoids that cost entirely.
The caveat is scope. Coolify handles deployments and databases well, but a production application also needs analytics, error tracking, session replay, and uptime monitoring. Adding those from separate vendors runs $154+/mo. If you need the full observability stack, compare total cost before committing to a deployment-only platform.
Related guides:
Last updated May 26, 2026. Pricing verified against coolify.io/pricing.
Coolify is free to self-host under the Apache 2.0 license — no software cost, only your VPS ($5/mo). Coolify Cloud starts at $5/month for 2 connected servers, with additional servers at $3/month each. An annual plan saves 20% ($4/month billed annually).
Coolify ships frequent point releases in the v4 beta cycle — see the live releases page for the current version and the milestones page for v4 stable progress. The v4 cycle added Nixpacks support, Docker Compose deployments, preview environments, Sentinel monitoring, and 280+ one-click templates. The v5 rewrite has no assigned issues or public timeline on GitHub.
Coolify has over 55,900 GitHub stars as of May 2026, making it the most-starred self-hosted PaaS on GitHub.
Yes — self-hosted Coolify is officially free forever with no feature limits, no user caps, and no trial period. The full product is available under Apache 2.0 at no cost. You only pay for the VPS infrastructure you run it on (~$5/mo minimum per server).
Coolify Cloud costs $5/month for up to 2 connected servers, plus $3/month per additional server. Billed annually, the base plan is ~$4/month (20% discount). Each additional team requires a separate subscription. VPS infrastructure is separate — Cloud manages your Coolify control plane, not your application hosting.
Coolify uses the Apache License 2.0. This permits personal, commercial, and enterprise use; modification and redistribution with attribution; and proprietary applications built on top of Coolify. There is no copyleft requirement — you are not obligated to open-source your own applications deployed through Coolify.
Yes. The self-hosted version is the full product with no restrictions or feature gates — it is effectively the free tier. Coolify Cloud is the paid managed tier starting at $5/month. There is no freemium cloud tier.
Coolify v4 is the current major version — a complete rewrite of v3. It introduced Docker Compose support, Nixpacks buildpack auto-detection, Traefik/Caddy reverse proxy options, Sentinel server monitoring, 280+ one-click templates, preview environments, and multi-server management from a single dashboard. The v4 beta cycle is active; see the Coolify releases page for the current version and the milestones page for stable release progress.
