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▸ Free tool

Self-Hosting Cost Calculator.

Coolify on a VPS or a managed platform? Compare the monthly bill for your apps, workers, Postgres and Redis, then add the hours you will spend running it.

▸ Prices verified October 5, 2026

Public list prices in USD per month, before VAT. Every number below is editable, because prices change and regions differ.

1. Your workload

vCPU per service only matters for usage-billed platforms like Railway.

2. Coolify on a VPS

Cost-Optimized line. Hetzner showed it as currently not available on its cloud page on the verified date.

Coolify

Self-hosted Coolify runs on your server and needs about 2 GB of RAM. Coolify Cloud runs the dashboard for you, so that RAM is free.

3. Managed platform

Web: 1 CPU, 2 GB · Worker: 0.5 CPU, 512 MB · Postgres: 1 CPU, 2 GB · Redis: 256 MB

Changing the platform or a RAM size refills these prices from the price list. Edit them after that.

4. Your time

Updates, backups, restore tests, monitoring and incidents. Be honest: this line decides the result more often than the servers do.

Per month, with your time

Coolify + VPS
$0
Managed
$0

Coolify + VPS

Managed

    Prices verified October 5, 2026

    USD per month, before VAT and sales tax. Hetzner prices are for Germany and Finland and exclude the IPv4 address, which is a separate line.

    How the comparison works

    Both sides run the same workload. On the self-hosted side the calculator adds up the RAM your services need, plus about 2 GB for Coolify itself, and fits it onto as many servers of your plan as it takes at the RAM share you choose. Then it adds the IPv4 address, server backups, traffic over the included amount and any extras such as off-site backup storage.

    On the managed side, each web app, worker, database and Redis instance gets the first plan on the price list with at least the RAM you asked for. Railway bills by usage instead, so it uses RAM and vCPU prices. Plan fees and included usage credit are applied, then storage and bandwidth.

    Last comes your time. Hours a month times your rate goes on both sides, because managed platforms still need some care. The break-even line tells you how many self-hosting hours a month you can spend before the managed platform would have been the cheaper choice.

    What the numbers leave out

    A single VPS is a single point of failure. Managed databases come with automated backups and someone else on call. Matching that yourself means off-site backups, restore tests, monitoring, and often a second server. None of that is hard with Coolify, but it is real work, so put it in the extras and the hours. On the other side, managed prices climb fast with RAM, so a growing app often outgrows the tiers before it outgrows a VPS.

    Questions, answered

    Is self-hosting with Coolify cheaper than Render, Railway or Heroku?

    On the server bill, almost always: a VPS gives you far more RAM per dollar than a managed service. The total is closer once you count your own time. Patching, backups, restores, monitoring and the night something breaks are now your job. Put an honest number of hours into the ops line and see where you land.

    How many ops hours a month should I count?

    For one small app on one server, 2 to 4 hours a month is a fair start: OS and Coolify updates, checking backups, a restore test now and then. Add more for each extra server, for a database you care about, and for incidents. Managed platforms are not zero either, so count an hour or so for upgrades and config.

    What does Coolify cost?

    Self-hosted Coolify is free and open source. It needs at least 2 CPU cores, 2 GB of RAM and 10 GB of disk on the server it runs on, which the calculator adds to your RAM. Coolify Cloud runs the dashboard for you for $5 a month with 2 servers, plus $3 per extra server, and your apps still run on your own servers.

    What do I give up when I leave a managed platform?

    Mostly the things you do not see: managed database backups and restores, a provider on call, easy scaling, and redundancy. One VPS is one point of failure. To get close you need off-site backups, a tested restore, monitoring and often a second server, and the calculator has an extras line for that.

    Why is Vercel not in the comparison?

    Vercel runs frontends and serverless functions, but not long-running queue workers or a database of its own, so it does not map onto the same workload. Its Pro plan is $20 per developer seat a month with $20 of usage included. For a Laravel or Node app with workers, Render, Railway and Heroku are the closer match.

    Where do the prices come from?

    From each provider's public pricing page, checked on October 5, 2026, in USD per month without VAT. They are all in one data file with links below. Prices change and differ by region, so every number on this page is editable, and changing a plan only refills the fields it owns.

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