The self-hosted feel, without owning the pager
Coolify is a lovely piece of open-source software: a self-hosted PaaS you install on your own servers and run yourself. That is real freedom, and it is real work, because the uptime, the patches and the 3am restart are all yours. Ruust gives you the same connect-a-repo simplicity as a managed platform: a flat price per Egg per month in GBP, unmetered egress on every tier, and Eggs that stay warm around the clock. And if you still want your own metal, Bring Your Own Host runs our open-source agent on your Linux boxes whilst we keep the panel.
Flat price per Egg, in GBP · unmetered egress · no cold starts
This is not really a like-for-like fight, and it is fairer to say so. Coolify is free software you operate on servers you own and secure. Ruust is a managed platform you pay a flat GBP price for, with the ops handled for you. Here is how the two compare on cost, effort and what you get in the box, so you can pick the trade-off that suits you.
| Ruust | Coolify | |
|---|---|---|
| Model | Fully managed hosting. We run the control plane, the ingress and the hosts. | Self-hosted software: you install, secure and operate the platform and its servers. |
| What you pay | Flat per Egg per month in GBP: Nano £3, Small £6, Standard £12, Large £24. | The software is free; you pay for your own servers, plus your own time to run them. |
| Egress | Unmetered on every tier, with no egress bill ever (fair-use rate caps only). | Whatever your server host charges: bandwidth tends to be metered or capped by them. |
| Who carries the ops | We do: patching, host health, upgrades and on-call are ours, not yours. | You do: OS updates, backups, security and the 3am restart are on you. |
| Always-on | Every Egg kept warm 24/7. No cold starts, no scale-to-zero, no spin-up lag. | Runs as long as your server does; keeping it up and warm is your responsibility. |
| Databases | Managed Postgres and Redis Eggs with a persistent volume, private to your Coop. | You can run databases too, but backups and durability are yours to configure. |
| Own hardware | BYOH: run our open-source Apache-2.0 agent on your boxes, £2/Egg capped £20/host. | Fully self-hosted and open-source (this is the whole point), on hardware you provide. |
| Control and lock-in | Managed, but BYOH and standard containers keep you portable. | Total control: open-source, your servers, no vendor between you and the metal. |
Coolify details are as we understand them and can change. Always check Coolify's current pricing and features for the latest.
What you get by switching.
A flat GBP bill instead of a second job
Coolify's software costs nothing, but running it is not free: the server, the patching and the pager are yours. Ruust is one flat price per Egg per month in GBP, the same in every region, with the operations included. You are paying for someone else to hold the uptime, which for a lot of small teams is the cheaper deal once your time is in the sum.
Unmetered egress on a pipe you do not have to buy
Self-hosting shifts bandwidth costs to whichever server host you rent from, and those bills tend to be metered or capped. On Ruust, egress is unmetered on every tier, from Nano to Large, with no bandwidth line on your invoice at all. Per-Egg fair-use rate caps keep abuse out, but there is no metering or cap on the volume you serve.
Always warm, without you keeping it warm
With a self-hosted box, staying up and responsive is your job: a crashed process or a rebooting server means downtime you have to notice. Every Ruust Egg is kept warm 24/7 with no scale-to-zero and no spin-up lag, and if one cracks we bring it back. The first request after a quiet night is as quick as the last, and you did not have to babysit it.
Batteries included, and someone else owns them
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 issued in roughly 90 seconds and renewed for you. Managed Postgres and Redis, private networking inside a Coop, health checks and zero-downtime rolling deploys come as standard, and keeping all of that patched is our problem, not yours.
Where Coolify is the better fit.
Genuine freedom and zero platform fee
Coolify is open-source and self-hosted, which means no per-Egg fee, no vendor between you and your servers, and the software itself is free. If you already run infrastructure and want to add a tidy deploy layer on top of it without paying a platform, that is a real and honest advantage. Some teams simply prefer to own the whole stack, and Coolify is an excellent way to do exactly that.
Total control and data locality
Because it runs on hardware you choose, Coolify lets you keep everything inside your own network, your own region and your own compliance boundary. For workloads with strict data-residency or air-gap requirements, or for people who enjoy operating their own kit, that level of control is hard to match on a managed platform.
A thriving open-source community
Coolify has an active, enthusiastic community and tends to move quickly. If you like being able to read the code, file issues, contribute features and shape the roadmap, an open-source project gives you a say that a closed managed service cannot. That momentum and transparency are a genuine strength.
Ruust vs Coolify, the common questions.
Is Ruust just hosted Coolify?
No, they are different things and it is fairer to be clear about that. Coolify is open-source software you install and operate on your own servers. Ruust is our own managed platform: we build and run the control plane, ingress and TLS, and by default we run the hosts too. We are not managed-only though: with Bring Your Own Host you run our open-source, Apache-2.0 agent on your own Linux boxes and keep our panel in front, so you can self-host with Ruust as well. The real difference from Coolify is that you never install or operate the platform software yourself, whether it runs on our metal or yours.
I like self-hosting. Does Ruust have anything for me?
Yes, that is exactly what Bring Your Own Host is for. You run our open-source, Apache-2.0 agent on your own Linux boxes and keep the Ruust dashboard, CLI and control plane in front of it. It is pull-based, so Ruust never dials into your host, and egress stays unmetered because the pipe is yours. You pay for the panel not the metal, at £2 per Egg capped at £20 per host. It is a middle ground between full self-hosting and fully managed.
What does Ruust actually cost compared with running Coolify myself?
Coolify's software is free, so the honest comparison is our flat fee versus your server bill plus your time. Ruust is flat GBP per Egg per month (Nano £3, Small £6, Standard £12 and Large £24, or a custom slider at £12 per vCPU plus £6 per GB) with unmetered egress and the operations included. Whether that beats self-hosting depends on how you value the hours you would otherwise spend patching, backing up and being on call.
Can I move an app off Coolify onto Ruust easily?
Usually yes. If it runs in a container it runs on Ruust. Connect your git repo and let Nixpacks autobuild it or bring your own Dockerfile, set a start command and any build-time env vars, then pick a region and size. You are live on HTTPS in about two minutes, and pointing a custom domain over triggers automatic TLS. Managed Postgres and Redis are available as database Eggs, or you can connect an existing database by connection string during the move.