Self-Hosted vs. SaaS: What Coolify Actually Costs (and Where It Gets Expensive)

Short summary

Coolify costs 3–9× less than managed PaaS in raw server fees, but operational overhead—DevOps maintenance, security patching, incident response—often erases savings. It's viable only with in-house ops expertise, multiple projects to amortize costs, and explicit data-sovereignty needs; solo founders belong on managed platforms.

• •Coolify self-hosted PaaS costs €6–20/month vs. $40–100+/month on Vercel/Heroku—but raw server cost hides DevOps labor
• •True breakeven: one hour of DevOps time monthly (typical ops overhead) costs more than the platform savings on a single small project
• •Recommended only when: in-house DevOps capability exists, multiple apps share one server, and data independence is a real requirement—not marketing narrative

Generated with AI, which can make mistakes.