Dokkuvs
Heroku
Heroku: The managed original, worth the price when you do not want to own the server or the restores
Dokku
Single-server platform that accepts a git push and runs Heroku buildpacks on Docker
As of 31 August 2026, Dokku is free to use. Dokku has been the smallest working Heroku equivalent since 2013 and still ships releases, but one person writes almost all of it and the project takes in roughly ten and a half thousand US dollars a year. Softwr lists it under Cloud. Dokku is made by Dokku (community project, maintained by Jose Diaz-Gonzalez), available on Linux, Docker, CLI, Self-hosted.
Overview
What Dokku does
Dokku is an MIT licensed platform that turns a single Linux server into something that behaves like Heroku. You push a git branch, it detects the language with a Heroku buildpack or reads your Dockerfile, builds an image and runs it behind nginx with certificates from Let's Encrypt. Official plugins provision PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Redis, RabbitMQ and Elasticsearch. The repository was created in June 2013, has passed 32,000 stars, and released version 0.38.27 in August 2026, so the maturity is real rather than nostalgic. The commercially interesting part is Dokku Pro, a proprietary add-on sold as an 849 US dollar one-time licence covering one production server and two pre-production servers, with free upgrades and no subscription. What it adds is the web dashboard, a JSON REST API, git push over HTTPS for pushing from behind a firewall, browser log tailing and team management. Those are precisely the things a company rather than an individual needs, and the free edition has none of them. The judgement a buyer has to make is whether a lifetime promise is worth 849 dollars from a project with one active maintainer, roughly 10,500 US dollars of annual income recorded on Open Collective, and a Pro product still described by its own site as in development at early bird pricing. Buyers are individual developers, consultancies and small teams who want Heroku semantics on hardware they control and are comfortable living in a terminal. The trade-offs are structural rather than cosmetic. Dokku is single-server by design; multi-node runs through a k3s scheduler that is missing log commands, process inspection and consistent post-run hooks, while the older Kubernetes scheduler is deprecated. Supported operating systems are Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 and Debian 11 or later on x64 and arm64, with nothing in the Red Hat family. Backups are per-plugin commands you schedule with cron yourself, with no unified snapshot and no point-in-time recovery.
What people use it for
- Running a dozen side projects and client applications on one virtual private server with Heroku style deployment
- Moving off a managed platform when the monthly bill has grown faster than the traffic has
- A consultancy that wants buildpack deployments without teaching every client team Kubernetes
- Keeping a legacy Procfile application alive on hardware you control after a managed platform deprecates its stack
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Dokku.
- One maintainer accounts for nearly all human commit activity and the project records roughly 10,500 US dollars of annual income on Open Collective, which is not enough to fund a maintainer, so continuity rests on one person continuing to volunteer.
- Dokku Pro asks 849 US dollars for a lifetime licence from a project with no disclosed legal entity behind the promise and no published refund terms, while the product is still described as in development at early bird pricing.
- Dokku is single-server by design, and the k3s scheduler that provides multi-node support is missing log retrieval, process inspection and content-based health checks, with a post-run hook the documentation says does not consistently fire.
- Supported operating systems are limited to Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 and Debian 11 or later, so organisations standardised on Red Hat, Rocky or Alma Linux cannot run it on their approved base image.
- Backups are separate commands per datastore plugin that you schedule yourself, with no unified snapshot, no point-in-time recovery and no tested restore path, so verifying that a restore works is entirely your responsibility.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Dokku
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- DokkuvsRender
Render: Managed with published prices and no maintainer bus factor to reason about
- DokkuvsFly.io
Fly.io: Better when the application needs to run in several regions rather than on one box
Pricing
What Dokku costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Dokku
Free
- MIT licensed, no usage limits
- Command line and SSH only
- All datastore and certificate plugins
- Community support
Dokku Pro
$849 /one-time
- Lifetime licence with free upgrades and no subscription
- Covers 1 production and 2 pre-production servers
- Web dashboard and JSON REST API
- Git push over HTTPS for firewalled networks
- Team management and browser log tailing
- Email support from the maintainers
Capabilities
Features
Git push deploy
Push a branch and Dokku builds and releases the application
Heroku buildpacks
Runs the same buildpacks, so Procfile based applications move across largely unchanged
Datastore plugins
Official plugins for PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB, Redis, RabbitMQ and Elasticsearch
Automatic certificates
Let's Encrypt plugin issues and renews certificates per application
Zero downtime deploys
Checks the new container before switching nginx traffic to it
Pluggable schedulers
Runs on local Docker by default, with k3s and Nomad schedulers available
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is Dokku still maintained?
Yes. Version 0.38.27 shipped in August 2026 with roughly six releases in the preceding two months. The caveat is that one maintainer writes nearly all of it.
What does Dokku Pro give me over the free edition?
A web dashboard, a JSON REST API, git push over HTTPS, browser log tailing, team management and email support from the maintainers. It costs 849 US dollars once for one production and two pre-production servers.
Can Dokku run across multiple servers?
Only through the k3s or Nomad schedulers. The k3s path is missing several commands and health check types, and the older Kubernetes scheduler is deprecated and no longer developed.
Will my Heroku application run on it unchanged?
Usually. Dokku runs the same buildpacks and reads a Procfile, so the application layer normally moves across. Add-ons, scaling behaviour and backups are the parts you have to rebuild.
Keep looking
Where to go from Dokku
- Dokku alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Dokku pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Dokku badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Cloud softwareThe full category
- Best Cloud softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Cloud software for
Compare Dokku with
- Fly.io
- Render
- Heroku
- Coolify
- CapRover
- Qovery
- Porter
- Railway
- Northflank
- Podman
- Portworx
- minikube
- Scaleway
- SST
- Tencent Cloud
- Terragrunt
- Qovery
- Skopeo
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Dokku, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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Dokku badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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