July 19, 2026 (today)
Written by Temps Team
Last updated July 19, 2026 (today)
Temps and Openship are open-source, self-hostable deployment platforms with git deployments, preview environments, automatic HTTPS, managed databases, backups, and transactional email. The important difference is not whether either platform can ship a container. It is how each platform is built, what it asks you to operate, and what happens after your application reaches production.
Openship is the stronger choice when you want a desktop application or one control plane that deploys to clean remote servers over SSH. Temps is the stronger choice when you want deployment and application observability—AI crawler analytics, product analytics, OpenTelemetry, funnels, session replay, Sentry-compatible error tracking, uptime checks, and request logs—built into one platform.
The short answer: Choose Openship for agentless SSH targets and a desktop-first workflow. Choose Temps when you want to deploy Docker Compose projects and diagnose production behavior without assembling separate analytics, tracing, replay, error-tracking, and uptime services. Both are free to self-host, both use standard containers, and neither is the right answer for every team.
This article is written by the Temps team. We reviewed the public source of Openship v0.1.11 and the current Temps repository on July 19, 2026. Claims below link to official code or documentation. We have not published a controlled benchmark between the two products, so we do not present estimated latency or memory differences as measured facts.
| Capability | Temps | Openship |
|---|---|---|
| Self-hosted license | MIT or Apache 2.0 | Apache 2.0 |
| Core implementation | Rust workspace, compiled server | TypeScript monorepo, bundled Node/Bun service |
| Self-hosted proxy | Pingora—built into the Temps binary; no separate proxy dependency | OpenResty—separate Nginx + Lua service |
| Git and preview deployments | Yes | Yes |
| Docker Compose deployment | Yes—first-class multi-service preset | Yes—first-class multi-service flow |
| Remote server model | Temps node plus WireGuard mesh | Agentless SSH target |
| Native desktop app | No | Yes—Electron |
| Automation interfaces | CLI, REST API, and recommended agent skills | CLI, REST API, and MCP |
| Request and container analytics | Yes | Yes |
| Product events and funnels | Yes | No equivalent found in public source |
| AI crawler analytics | Yes | No equivalent found in public source |
| OpenTelemetry traces, metrics, and logs | Yes | No equivalent found in public source |
| Browser session replay | Yes—rrweb-based | No equivalent found in public source |
| Application error tracking | Yes—Sentry-compatible | No equivalent found in public source |
| External uptime checks | Yes | Advanced monitoring is listed as coming next |
| Managed Postgres, Redis, MongoDB | Yes | Yes |
| Managed MySQL | No | Yes |
| S3-compatible object storage | Yes | Yes |
| Transactional email | Yes | Yes—plus a broader mail/webmail stack |
| Self-hosted price | $0 plus your infrastructure | $0 plus your infrastructure |
The language comparison matters, but only when connected to an operational consequence.
Openship is a TypeScript monorepo split into an API, CLI, Next.js dashboard, Electron desktop application, email application, and shared packages. Its API package uses Hono, BullMQ, ioredis, Better Auth, Drizzle-backed data access, and adapter packages for deployment targets.
For self-hosted traffic, Openship detects and configures OpenResty in its platform adapter. OpenResty combines Nginx with Lua, giving Openship a mature event-driven proxy and a programmable management layer. Application containers sit on isolated networks, and a separately operated OpenResty service routes domains to the active container.
That is a sensible architecture. Nginx is familiar to operators, its configuration model is well understood, and OpenResty adds dynamic behavior without requiring Openship to write a proxy from scratch. Openship also keeps its control plane away from remote production machines: the architecture documentation defines local, SSH-connected server, and cloud targets, and the server target does not require an Openship daemon on the destination.
The trade-off is the number of moving parts. A TypeScript API has a JavaScript runtime and garbage collector. The full product also coordinates a dashboard, database, job system, adapters, and optional desktop and mail applications. Openship packages that experience well, but it is not one compiled server process.
Temps implements its platform core as a Rust workspace. The root Cargo configuration includes Pingora and dedicated crates for the proxy, analytics, session replay, error tracking, monitoring, deployments, backups, DNS, managed services, and WireGuard networking.
Every application request passes through Pingora, the Rust proxy framework Cloudflare created to replace its previous Nginx-based proxy infrastructure. Pingora is compiled into the Temps binary—it is not a separate Nginx, Traefik, Caddy, or proxy-container dependency to install and version. In the default server mode, the same Temps process runs the control plane and proxy; split mode still uses the same Temps executable. Routing, health-gated deployment swaps, TLS, request logging, and visitor attribution can therefore share typed Rust services instead of communicating across a separate proxy configuration boundary.
Rust gives Temps three practical properties:
Those properties make Rust a good fit for infrastructure software, but they do not prove that Temps is faster than Openship in every scenario. Nginx and OpenResty are highly optimized. A deployment control plane also spends much of its time waiting on Git, Docker, SSH, databases, and networks—not executing language-level instructions.
Citation-ready takeaway: Temps compiles Pingora into the Temps binary, so self-hosting does not require a separate reverse-proxy dependency. Openship uses a TypeScript control plane and a separately operated OpenResty service for self-hosted routing. This is an architectural difference, not a published head-to-head performance result.
For a deeper explanation of the Temps decision, read why we use Rust for a deployment platform and the single-binary architecture documentation.
A fair comparison should make the case for the competitor before making the case for Temps. Openship has several concrete advantages.
Openship has dedicated Compose code for parsing projects, building multiple services, reconciling dashboard edits, and generating composite routes. Its repository contains a complete Compose deployment pipeline, not a marketing placeholder.
Temps also supports Docker Compose as a first-class deployment preset. It deploys multi-container applications from Git, merges optional Compose override YAML, routes custom domains to individual services, injects project environment variables into every service, and preserves volumes across redeployments. Container exec can target individual Compose services. See the Temps 0.0.7 Compose release details.
Both platforms can deploy an existing multi-service compose.yaml. Openship's current edge is its richer Compose parsing and dashboard reconciliation. Temps' edge is connecting the deployed services to the rest of its observability platform.
An Openship control plane can build locally, then stream an image to a remote Linux server over SSH. The destination runs your containers and OpenResty, but no Openship dashboard or agent. This keeps production machines focused on serving workloads and lets one control plane target several providers.
Temps uses a different multi-node model: nodes participate in the platform and connect through an embedded WireGuard mesh. That supports internal DNS, scheduling, and platform-aware failover, but it is a more opinionated cluster architecture.
Choose Openship when “connect any clean server over SSH” is the requirement. Choose Temps when you want the nodes to behave as one coordinated platform.
Openship ships an Electron desktop application alongside its web dashboard and CLI. It also generates MCP tools from permission-tagged API routes through its MCP module.
Temps has a web console, CLI, API, and installable agent skills, but no equivalent native desktop client. The former Temps MCP package is deprecated; agent skills are the recommended automation interface. If a desktop-first workflow matters, Openship wins without qualification.
Both platforms provision Postgres, Redis, MongoDB, backups, object storage, and email. Openship adds MySQL and a broader iRedMail-based mail and webmail system. Temps focuses more narrowly on services it can connect to its monitoring, query, backup, and observability layers.
Broader is better when you need one of those additional services. Narrower can be better when you value deeper platform integration.
Temps differentiates after deployment, where production questions move from “is the container running?” to “what did the user experience, which request failed, and what changed?”
Openship has real analytics. Its analytics service combines OpenResty or cloud traffic buckets with deployment and container data. It reports requests, bandwidth, response time, status information, paths, unique-request counts, and resource usage.
Temps covers that infrastructure layer and adds application-level signals:
The distinction is important: Openship analytics answers “how is traffic reaching this deployment?” Temps also answers “what did this visitor do before the error?” See the Temps analytics documentation, session replay documentation, and error-tracking setup.
Dedicated products such as Sentry or PostHog remain deeper in their specialties. Temps wins on consolidation and correlation, not on matching every feature of every observability vendor.
One compiled core is easier to version as a unit. There is no Node runtime to patch for the main server, no separately installed or separately versioned reverse proxy, and no JavaScript garbage collector handling application traffic. Pingora ships inside the Temps binary rather than becoming another self-hosted dependency.
That can translate to lower platform overhead and more predictable latency, especially on a small VPS. But the honest qualifier matters again: resource consumption depends on enabled services, workload, database configuration, retention, and traffic. Until both projects publish a reproducible benchmark on identical hardware, “Rust is more efficient” should be treated as an architectural expectation, not a measured product ranking.
Because Pingora is a Rust library inside the Temps platform, request routing can participate directly in platform behavior. Temps uses this integration for request logs, visitor attribution, route updates, health-gated traffic switches, access controls, and analytics ingestion.
OpenResty is more operationally familiar. Pingora is more deeply programmable from the same language and type system as the rest of Temps. The better choice depends on whether you value established Nginx operations or one integrated Rust data plane.
Both products are free to self-host. Openship pricing lists Cloud at $20 per active seat per month, or $16 effective with annual billing, plus compute. It includes 100 GB of egress per project before a published $0.05 per GB overage.
Temps Cloud starts around $6 per month as managed infrastructure priced at provider cost plus 30%. Temps does not add per-seat or bandwidth metering. The underlying server size still changes with workload, so “$6 forever for any application” would be misleading.
For one developer, either managed model may be acceptable. For a five-person team, Openship's published seat component is $100 per month before compute; Temps does not multiply the platform price by team size.
The overlap is substantial:
Neither platform locks your application into a proprietary function runtime. If you leave, your source, images, and database formats remain standard. That portability is one of the strongest reasons to choose either project over a closed deployment cloud.
Choose Openship if:
Choose Temps if:
Choose neither if:
We inspected Openship's public API modules for deployments, Compose, analytics, backups, permissions, mail, notifications, and MCP; its adapter and desktop packages; its official architecture docs; and its pricing page. We inspected the equivalent Temps Rust crates, SDKs, CLI, public docs, and comparison implementation.
A “yes” in this article means the feature exists in official documentation or public source. When a homepage claim and repository status differ, we use the narrower repository-backed description. Product behavior and pricing change, so this article includes its review date and links to primary sources. Corrections can be reported through the Temps GitHub repository.
Rust removes garbage collection from the Temps proxy and platform core and compiles to native code, which supports lower overhead and predictable latency. Openship uses a TypeScript control plane and OpenResty, an optimized Nginx-based proxy. No controlled public benchmark compares the two products, so it is accurate to describe the architectural advantage but not to claim a measured speed multiplier.
Openship uses OpenResty for self-hosted routing. OpenResty combines Nginx with Lua modules. Its platform adapter detects OpenResty paths, ensures the shared configuration, and writes routes that forward domains to application containers.
Yes. Openship includes proxy request analytics, bandwidth and response-time data, path and status information, deployment statistics, and container resource metrics. Temps adds product events, funnels, visitor journeys, Web Vitals, browser session replay, and Sentry-compatible application error tracking.
Yes. Select the Docker Compose preset and deploy the repository containing the Compose file. Temps supports multi-service builds, service-specific public routes and custom domains, Compose override files, environment injection, preserved volumes, and per-service container exec. As with any move between hosts, validate external secrets, host-specific bind mounts, DNS, and provider-specific labels before switching production traffic.
Yes. Openship is Apache 2.0 licensed. Temps is available under MIT or Apache 2.0. Both cost $0 for the platform when self-hosted, but you still pay for servers, storage, backups, bandwidth, and operational time.
Openship is better when the team values desktop or agentless SSH workflows and its broader managed-service catalog. Temps is better when the team wants deployments, AI and product analytics, OpenTelemetry, Sentry-compatible errors, replay, and uptime in one system with no managed per-seat platform fee. Both handle single-container and Docker Compose applications; the deciding factor is what the team needs around the deployment.
Related: Compare every row in the Temps vs Openship feature matrix, review the Docker Compose release details, install the recommended Temps agent skills, or see how Temps correlates requests, traces, errors, and revenue.
