Coolify Has a Free Self-Hosted API That Replaces Heroku and Vercel

#coolify #selfhosted #deployment #devops

Coolify is a self-hosted alternative to Heroku, Netlify, and Vercel. Deploy any app with Git push, manage databases, and monitor everything — on your own server with a full API.

Setup

curl -fsSL https://cdn.coollabs.io/coolify/install.sh | bash

This installs Coolify on any VPS (2GB RAM minimum). Dashboard at http://your-server:8000.

API Access

Every action in the dashboard is available via REST API:

# List applications
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $COOLIFY_TOKEN" \
  http://your-server:8000/api/v1/applications

# Deploy an application
curl -X POST -H "Authorization: Bearer $COOLIFY_TOKEN" \
  http://your-server:8000/api/v1/applications/{uuid}/deploy

# Get deployment logs
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $COOLIFY_TOKEN" \
  http://your-server:8000/api/v1/applications/{uuid}/logs

What You Can Deploy

Applications

Any Dockerfile — full control
Buildpacks — auto-detect (Node, Python, Go, Ruby, etc.)
Static sites — Nginx served
Docker Compose — multi-container apps

Databases (One-Click)

PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MongoDB
Redis, KeyDB, DragonFly
ClickHouse, SurrealDB

Services (One-Click)

n8n, Plausible, Umami, Ghost
Gitea, MinIO, Appwrite

Git Push Deploy

# Connect your GitHub/GitLab repo
# Every push to main auto-deploys
# Preview deployments for PRs

Deploy Automation Script

import requests

COOLIFY = "http://your-server:8000/api/v1"
headers = {"Authorization": f"Bearer {TOKEN}"}

# List all apps
apps = requests.get(f"{COOLIFY}/applications", headers=headers).json()
for app in apps:
    print(f"{app['name']} - {app['status']}")

# Trigger deploy
def deploy(app_uuid):
    r = requests.post(f"{COOLIFY}/applications/{app_uuid}/deploy", headers=headers)
    return r.json()

Why This Matters

No vendor lock-in: Your server, your data, your rules
Free forever: No per-app pricing, no surprise bills
Full API: Automate everything programmatically
One-click services: Databases and tools without Docker knowledge

Need custom deployment automation or self-hosted infrastructure? I build developer tools and data pipelines. Check out my web scraping actors on Apify or reach out at spinov001@gmail.com for custom solutions.

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