Dokku vs Railway
Both are alternatives to Heroku. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Railway vs Dokku — same comparison, one verdict.
Dokku is open source (MIT) and Railway is not (Proprietary (hosted service)) — so the real question is whether you want to own the platform as a service stack or rent it.
Dokku
The original self-hosted PaaS — small, stable, unglamorous.
Dokku has been doing this since 2013 and describes itself accurately as the smallest PaaS implementation you have seen: Git-push deployment via Docker, Heroku buildpack support so existing apps often deploy unchanged, and a plugin system for databases and TLS. MIT, around 32k stars. It has no web interface — everything is the command line — and that is deliberate. For someone comfortable in a terminal it is the most dependable option here, and it has outlived several better-funded competitors.
Railway
The Heroku experience, without owning a server.
Railway is the closest thing to what Heroku felt like in its best years: connect a repository, it detects the framework, provisions the database and deploys — with usage-based pricing that is typically well below Heroku for equivalent work. Proprietary and hosted, which is the honest trade. Included because for a great many teams the real choice is not self-hosted versus managed but which managed provider, and pretending everyone should run a server would not serve the reader.
Side by side
10 points of comparison, every one read from a verified field. Green marks the side that wins a row outright. A dash means we do not hold that fact — never that it is zero.
| Dokku | Railway | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty ScoreOur transparent 0–100 composite for data ownership and exit cost. | 95 | 34 |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No |
| Local-first data | Yes | No |
| License | MIT | Proprietary (hosted service) |
| Pricing | Free and open source. You supply the server. | Usage-based with a small monthly minimum; typically well below Heroku for comparable workloads. |
| RAM to run it wellThe figure that actually matters, not the vendor's minimum. | 2 GB plus whatever your apps need | — |
| Realistic running costWhat the box costs each month if you run it yourself. | $12–24/mo for a box running several apps, against Heroku dyno pricing charged per app | — |
| Setup timeHonest first-install estimate, not the marketing quickstart. | 30 minutes | — |
| Ongoing maintenanceThe part nobody budgets for. | Moderate. You own the host OS, Docker, TLS renewal and backups for everything on it. | — |
Dokku edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
Weighing both against staying on Heroku? Is Heroku free? What it actually costs →
Dokku
Strengths
- +Over a decade of stability; genuinely mature
- +Heroku buildpack support means many apps deploy unchanged
- +MIT and very light — runs on a small VPS
- +Extremely well documented for command-line use
Trade-offs
- −No web interface at all
- −Single-server by design
- −Assumes comfort with the command line
- −Fewer batteries included than Coolify
Railway
Strengths
- +Best developer experience of anything in this comparison
- +Usage-based pricing rather than fixed dyno tiers
- +Nothing to operate, patch or back up
- +Databases, cron and private networking built in
Trade-offs
- −Proprietary and hosted — a vendor dependency, same as Heroku
- −Usage pricing is harder to forecast than fixed dynos
- −Smaller company than Salesforce, with the risk that implies
- −No self-host option
Which one fits you
The trade-offs above, turned into a decision. Find the line that describes your team.
Choose Dokku
if you want the source and the option to fork it, and you would rather run it on your own hardware, and your data should stay on machines you control.
Choose Railway
if best developer experience of anything in this comparison.
Neither, yet
if both carry a real cost you should weigh first — no web interface at all, and proprietary and hosted — a vendor dependency, same as Heroku. If either of those is a dealbreaker for your team, the shortlist is wrong rather than the choice.
What it takes to run these yourself
Real requirements and honest running costs, not the vendor quickstart.
Dokku vs Railway — common questions
Is Dokku a better fit than Railway for platform as a service?
It depends on what you are optimising for, and the honest split is this: Dokku scores 95 to Railway's 34 on data ownership and exit cost, so it is the safer choice if you care about being able to leave. Railway earns its place on a different axis — best developer experience of anything in this comparison. Neither is a wrong answer for every team; the table above is the actual comparison.
What happens if we want to switch later?
Dokku keeps its data local or in open formats, so leaving is an export rather than a negotiation. Railway keeps your data on its own infrastructure, which is the part to plan for: confirm the export path before you commit, not when you are already trying to leave.
Is Dokku free?
Dokku: Free and open source. You supply the server.. The other side of this comparison, Railway, is priced as Usage-based with a small monthly minimum; typically well below Heroku for comparable workloads.. "Free" here means no licence fee — if you self-host it you still pay for the server, and the running cost row above is our honest estimate of that.
Can I self-host Dokku?
Dokku can be self-hosted; Railway cannot, so it stays on the vendor's infrastructure whatever you do.
Are Dokku and Railway both alternatives to Heroku?
Yes — both appear in our Heroku comparison, which is why they are worth putting side by side. People usually arrive here already having decided to move off Heroku and now choosing between the two replacements, which is a narrower and much easier question.
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-08-05. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.