Laravel Forge vs Coolify
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Laravel Forge and Coolify.
Quick Verdict
4.1/5
Laravel Forge
0 reviews
4.2/5
Coolify
0 reviews
Coolify is rated higher (4.2 vs 4.1). Laravel Forge provisions and manages PHP servers for Laravel applications. Auto-deploys from GitHub, manages Nginx, databases, SSL, and cron jobs. The standard for Laravel deployments. Coolify is a free, open source self-hosted platform for deploying apps, databases, and services on your own servers. Supports any Docker image, one-click databases, and automated SSL.
Laravel Forge Server management for PHP/Laravel deployments | Coolify Self-hosted open source Heroku/Netlify alternative | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.1 (0 reviews) | 4.2 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | paid | freemium |
| Starting price | From $12/mo | Free tier available✓ |
| Best for | Laravel and PHP developers — and agencies running multiple client servers — who want automated provisioning and deployment to any cloud VPS while keeping root access and provider choice | Solo developers and small teams with Linux skills who want Heroku-style deploys on their own cheap servers without per-app PaaS pricing |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ||
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | — | Bring your own servers; Cloud control plane on Hetzner in Falkenstein, Germany |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | managed optionapi access | free tieropen sourceself hostable |
| Visit Laravel Forge → | Visit Coolify → | |
Laravel Forge
Pros
- + Flat, published pricing ($12/$19/$39) on top of cheap self-chosen servers — strong cost control versus PaaS
- + Zero-downtime deployments, automated SSL, managed databases, queues, cron, monitoring and heartbeats in the box
- + Provider flexibility: Laravel VPS, DigitalOcean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, Hetzner Cloud, or bring your own server
- + A decade of Laravel deployments behind it; backed by Laravel Holdings with a $57M Series A and active development
- + Agency-friendly: organizations with role-based access and billing separation, unlimited sites and deployments
Cons
- - Monthly fee on top of server costs — poor value for a single small site
- - PHP-first; Node/Nuxt/Next.js support is newer and broader language support is still promised
- - No uptime SLA and community-only support on the Hobby plan
- - Power tool: provisioning existing servers can cause data loss; backups and OS security are your responsibility
- - Reliability of the running app depends on the underlying provider Forge does not control
Coolify
Pros
- + Self-hosted is free forever with the complete feature set — unlimited servers, deployments and team members, Apache 2.0, no feature paywall
- + Coolify Cloud is $5/month including 2 connected servers ($3/month per extra server) — a flat fee that takes no margin on your compute
- + Deploys apps, databases and 280+ one-click services with automatic Let's Encrypt TLS and git push workflows on any SSH-reachable Linux host
- + Open codebase with a large, active community (20k+ Discord members) and near-daily development
Cons
- - You own server security, patching, firewalling and workload backups — the platform only removes deployment tedium
- - No uptime SLA, no enterprise support tier, SSO or compliance package; support is community plus limited email on Cloud
- - Fast-moving project: frequent releases and occasional upgrade friction, with a busy issue tracker
- - Cloud base plan covers only 2 servers and each team needs its own subscription
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