Coolify vs Dokploy vs Railyard: three ways to run a self-hosted PaaS, compared honestly

Coolify and Dokploy both answer the same question: how do you get a Heroku-style git push workflow on a server you own, without paying a PaaS markup on top of it? Both are real, working, open-source answers. The difference between them — and between either one and Railyard — isn’t features on a comparison table. It’s where the panel itself lives, and who’s responsible for keeping it up.

The core difference: self-hosted panel vs. hosted control plane

Coolify and Dokploy are software you install on the same server you’re deploying to (or on a dedicated box you run yourself). You get the dashboard, the deploy pipeline, the proxy — and you also get a new piece of production infrastructure to patch, back up, and keep online. If that box goes down, your deploy tooling goes down with it.

Railyard’s control plane runs on Railyard’s own infrastructure. Your app’s server stays yours — same SSH access, same provider, same bill from DigitalOcean or Hetzner — but the thing orchestrating deploys isn’t a process competing for RAM on the box it’s deploying to, and it isn’t your job to patch.

Neither approach is wrong. Self-hosting the panel is the more “own everything” position, and some teams want exactly that. The tradeoff is real either way.

Pricing, as of this research (prices change — check each provider’s own page before deciding)

Coolify: fully free if you self-host it. Coolify Cloud (hosted by Coolify for you) starts around $5/mo for 2 servers, roughly $3 per additional server.
Dokploy: also free self-hosted. Dokploy Cloud starts near $4.50 per server on the Hobby tier; the Startup tier runs about $15 for 3 servers plus $4.50 per additional one. SSO is an Enterprise-only, contact-sales feature.
Railyard: Pro is $19/mo per team, flat, covering up to 5 servers and unlimited apps — the price doesn’t change as you add servers inside that limit. Team is $49/mo per team with SSO/SCIM and an audit log included, not gated behind a sales call.

If you’re running one small server and never plan to grow past it, Coolify or Dokploy self-hosted costs nothing and will do the job. The moment you add a second or third server, or need SSO because a client is asking for it, the economics and the “who’s on call for the panel” question start to shift.

What you don’t have to run with Railyard

No panel process sharing resources with your app on the box it’s deploying to.
No “the dashboard went down because the server it lives on went down” failure mode.
Database backups that are actually tested, not just scheduled.
SSO and an audit log as a normal paid plan, not an enterprise quote.

What you give up

Coolify and Dokploy are both open source; you can read every line of what’s deploying your app. Railyard’s control plane isn’t something you self-host today.
If cost is the only axis that matters and you’re staying on one server forever, self-hosting either panel is cheaper than any hosted option, including Railyard’s.

Full platform comparison: Railyard vs. Coolify. If you’re already running Coolify or Dokploy and just want the control plane off the box without touching how your app itself runs, attaching the same server to Railyard doesn’t require rebuilding anything.