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Comparison · Infra & APIs
Dokku vs Dokploy
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Dokku and Dokploy — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Dokku vs Dokploy: at a glance
What is Dokku?
Dokku ships patches weekly, and quietly grows a Kubernetes backend under its single-host roots.
Dokku releases on a near-weekly patch cadence, and most entries are dominated by Dependabot bumps to test fixtures. The real content is thin but consistent: a command injection fix in docker options evaluation, per-app Let's Encrypt emails on k3s, atomic buildpack list replacement, custom chown values, and JSON output added to apps:list, ps:scale and docker-options reports. Several tags in early July were published within minutes of each other and out of version order.
What is Dokploy?
A self-hosted PaaS spending its releases on secrets, injection fixes and plan limits.
Dokploy cuts patch releases every one to two weeks, and the recent stream is dominated by hardening rather than features. v0.29.12 added AES-256-GCM encryption for environment variables at rest and made backups carry the full keyring; v0.29.13 closed an OS command injection in git clone across all providers. The newest tag says outright that it is bug fixes only. Alongside that, plan limits landed in v0.29.10.
Dokku vs Dokploy: editorial side-by-side
Dokku
5.0INFRA · APIS
Dokku ships patches weekly, and quietly grows a Kubernetes backend under its single-host roots.
◆ Current state
Dokku releases on a near-weekly patch cadence, and most entries are dominated by Dependabot bumps to test fixtures. The real content is thin but consistent: a command injection fix in docker options evaluation, per-app Let's Encrypt emails on k3s, atomic buildpack list replacement, custom chown values, and JSON output added to apps:list, ps:scale and docker-options reports. Several tags in early July were published within minutes of each other and out of version order.
◆ Where it's heading
Two threads carry through. The scheduler-k3s plugin keeps accumulating what a real platform needs — helm chart previews, autoscaling auth state, control-plane node matching, per-app certificate configuration — which pushes Dokku beyond the single-host Docker tool it started as. The second is machine readability: command after command gains --format json, turning the CLI into something automation can consume rather than parse.
◆ Prediction
Expect JSON output to keep spreading command by command until it is the norm rather than a flag, and expect the k3s scheduler to stay the destination for new capability while the Docker scheduler receives fixes. The patch train shows no sign of consolidating into a minor release.
Dokploy
6.3INFRA · APIS
A self-hosted PaaS spending its releases on secrets, injection fixes and plan limits.
◆ Current state
Dokploy cuts patch releases every one to two weeks, and the recent stream is dominated by hardening rather than features. v0.29.12 added AES-256-GCM encryption for environment variables at rest and made backups carry the full keyring; v0.29.13 closed an OS command injection in git clone across all providers. The newest tag says outright that it is bug fixes only. Alongside that, plan limits landed in v0.29.10.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is a self-hosted platform trying to earn production trust: encrypted secrets, injection fixes, a pinned install script tied to each release, and Postgres query rewrites to stop hitting the 100-argument limit on rollbacks, schedules and backups. Plan limits point the other way — toward a commercial tier layered on the open-source core. Both arcs suggest the project is past feature-chasing and into making the platform defensible.
◆ Prediction
Expect the hardening thread to continue into the rest of the 0.29 line, with the plan-limits work being the seed of a paid tier that gets more definition before a 0.30 release.
Alternatives to Dokku and Dokploy
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Dokku or Dokploy.
Volatility
Volatility 3 caught up with Volatility 2, then started reorganising itself.
GLAuth
A small LDAP server that grew OpenTelemetry tracing, embedded plugins and RISC-V builds.
OctoPrint
OctoPrint 2.0 turns serial into one connector among several, and breaks plugins doing it.
CRI-O
Patch tags land monthly with release notes that itemize nothing.
ESPEasy
One release a year, each one a filesystem or networking rewrite you must plan for.
See all Dokku alternatives → · See all Dokploy alternatives →
Recent activity from Dokku and Dokploy
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 9h agoDokployv0.29.14: fixes only, including Postgres argument-limit rewrites
- 15d agoDokkuCommand injection fix, per-app Let's Encrypt on k3s
- 15d agoDokployv0.29.13 closes an OS command injection in git clone
- 19d agoDokkuBuildpack docs links and test dependency bumps
- 19d agoDokkuCertificate CN parsing fixed for OpenSSL 3.x
- 24d agoDokployv0.29.12 encrypts environment variables at rest with AES-256-GCM ⚡
- 28d agoDokployv0.29.11 pins the install script to each release
- 28d agoDokkuAtomic buildpack replacement and structured reports
- 1mo agoDokployv0.29.10 introduces plan limits
- 1mo agoDokku0.38.19 tag with no release notes
- 1mo agoDokkuTest fixture Go version bumps
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Dokku and Dokploy?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Dokploy is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Dokku better than Dokploy?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Dokploy is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Dokku?
Top Dokku alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Dokku alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/dokku for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Dokploy?
Top Dokploy alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Dokploy alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/dokploy for the full list with editorial commentary on each.