CapRover is free to install. Ruust is free of the operations.
CapRover is a genuinely good piece of open-source software: a self-hosted PaaS on Docker Swarm that you install, secure and run on your own server. Ruust is the managed version of that idea. One flat price per Egg per month in GBP, unmetered egress on every tier, every Egg kept warm around the clock, and none of the patching, hardening or 3am upgrades. You are paying for the operating, not the licence.
Flat price per Egg, in GBP · unmetered egress · no cold starts
This is not a like-for-like meter comparison, so we will be straight about it. CapRover's software is free; the cost is the server you rent and the time you spend running it. Ruust is a managed platform with a flat GBP price and unmetered egress. Here is how the two line up on the things that actually decide which one suits you.
| Ruust | CapRover | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost model | Flat GBP per Egg per month: Nano £3, Small £6, Standard £12, Large £24. No ops time. | Software is free; you pay for your own server and the time to run it. |
| Who operates it | Fully managed. We patch, secure, update and keep the platform running for you. | You do: install, secure, update the host, the Swarm and CapRover itself. |
| Egress | Unmetered on every tier. No bandwidth bill, ever. Fair-use rate caps only. | Depends on your host; many VPS providers meter bandwidth beyond an allowance. |
| Always-on | Every Egg kept warm 24/7. No cold starts, no spin-up lag. | Runs continuously on your server; uptime is whatever your single box gives you. |
| TLS and HTTPS | Issued in about 90 seconds and renewed automatically on managed ingress. | Built-in Let's Encrypt, though you own the renewal and the reverse proxy config. |
| Databases | Managed Postgres and Redis Eggs with a persistent volume, private to your Coop. | Deploy databases from the one-click store; you own backups and upgrades. |
| Cost floor | £3 for a Nano Egg, nothing to run underneath it. | One server can host many apps, so the marginal app is effectively free. |
| Own hardware | BYOH: run the open-source agent on your Linux boxes, £2/Egg capped £20/host. | Self-hosting is the whole point; runs on any server you can SSH into. |
CapRover details are as we understand them and can change. Always check CapRover's current pricing and features for the latest.
What you get by switching.
Someone else runs the platform
With CapRover the operating is the price: keeping the host patched, the Swarm healthy, CapRover itself upgraded and the whole thing secured is your job. Ruust is fully managed, so you connect a repo and ship. The flat monthly figure per Egg buys you out of the maintenance, not just the compute.
Unmetered egress, whatever your host would have charged
On a self-hosted box your bandwidth bill belongs to your VPS provider, and plenty of them meter transfer beyond an allowance. Ruust's egress is unmetered on every tier, from Nano to Large, with no volume cap and no line item. A busy launch day costs the same as a quiet one. Fair-use rate caps keep abuse out, nothing meters your traffic.
Always warm, with real deploy safety
Every Egg stays running 24/7, so there is no spin-up lag on the first request after a quiet spell. You also get zero-downtime rolling deploys, health checks and horizontal replicas as standard, which on a single self-hosted node you would design and babysit yourself.
Batteries included, no store to assemble
Connect a repo (Nixpacks autobuild or your own Dockerfile), pick a region and size, and you are live on HTTPS in about two minutes with TLS renewed automatically. Managed Postgres and Redis database Eggs, private Coop networking with deny-by-default peering and custom domains all come in the flat price, backups and upgrades included rather than left to you.
Where CapRover is the better fit.
Free software you fully control
CapRover is open source and free to install, and that is a real strength. If you are happy to run and maintain a server, you can host as many apps as it will hold without paying a platform a penny. For hobbyists, tight budgets and anyone who wants total control of the box, that is genuinely compelling and Ruust's managed model cannot beat free.
One server, many apps
Because it is self-hosted, the marginal cost of the next app on a CapRover box is effectively zero. If you already run a capable VPS and enjoy operating it, packing lots of small apps onto one server can be very economical, more so than a per-Egg price once you have enough of them.
A mature one-click ecosystem
CapRover's one-click app store, web dashboard and CLI are well established, with an active community and a wide catalogue of ready-made deployments. If you value that self-serve app library and the freedom to tinker under the bonnet, it is a proven and capable platform.
Ruust vs CapRover, the common questions.
Is Ruust just hosted CapRover?
No, they are different platforms, but the spirit is similar. CapRover is free software you install and operate on your own server. Ruust is our own managed platform with a flat GBP price per Egg, unmetered egress and always-on Eggs, and with Bring Your Own Host you can run our open-source, Apache-2.0 agent on your own boxes too. So if you like CapRover's model but would rather not operate the platform yourself, Ruust gives you that experience on our metal or on yours.
CapRover is free. How can paying for Ruust make sense?
The software is free, but running it is not: you pay for the server, and you pay in time to secure, patch and upgrade it. Ruust's flat per-Egg price (Nano £3 up to Large £24, unmetered egress) buys away that maintenance. If your time is worth more than the difference, or you would rather not own a server's security, managed usually wins. If you enjoy running your own box, CapRover stays a great choice.
What about egress costs?
On Ruust egress is unmetered on every tier, with no bandwidth bill and no volume cap, just per-Egg fair-use rate caps to stop abuse. Self-hosting CapRover, your egress is whatever your VPS provider charges, and many of them meter transfer beyond an allowance. That difference tends to grow with traffic.
Can I self-host but keep a managed dashboard?
Yes, that is Bring Your Own Host. You run the open-source, Apache-2.0 agent on your own Linux boxes and keep the Ruust dashboard, CLI and control plane. It is pull based, so Ruust never dials into your host. You pay for the panel not the metal, at £2 per Egg capped at £20 per host, and egress is unmetered because the pipe is your own. It is the closest halfway house between CapRover's self-hosting and Ruust's managed platform.