Developer tools · Updated October 2026
Heroku is a hosted platform for deploying apps with git push. If you would rather own your tools, here are 4 open source alternatives to Heroku, ranked by GitHub stars. Each one is free to use under its license, and you can read, change, and often self-host the code.
Coolify is both the most popular, with 63.3k stars, and the most recently updated, with a commit on Oct 21, 2026.
by coollabsio
An open-source, self-hostable PaaS alternative to Vercel, Heroku & Netlify that lets you easily deploy static sites, databases, full-stack applications and 360+ one-click services on your own servers.
by Dokploy
Open Source Alternative to Vercel, Netlify and Heroku.
by dokku
A docker-powered PaaS that helps you build and manage the lifecycle of applications
by caprover
Scalable PaaS (automated Docker+nginx) - aka Heroku on Steroids
By GitHub stars, Coolify is the most popular open source alternative to Heroku right now, with 63.3k stars, followed by Dokploy and Dokku. The best fit depends on your setup, so compare their licenses, languages, and recent activity in the table above.
Yes. All 4 projects on this page are open source, so the software itself is free to use, study, and change. Some of them also sell a hosted version or paid support.
Coolify (last commit Oct 21, 2026), Dokploy (last commit Oct 21, 2026), and Dokku (last commit Oct 20, 2026) have the most recent commits. Licenses on this list include Apache-2.0 and MIT.
Coolify
Dokploy
Dokku
CapRover