Coolify
👤 Andras Bacsai (Hungarian dev who left a $1,700/mo job in 2021, refused VCs, and grew Coolify into a 5-person, user-funded team.)🌐 siteheyandras.dev𝕏GitHub
In 2021, a Hungarian dev open-sourced a free, self-hosted alternative to Heroku — and never charged for the core.
Will it work? · our read
Community-funded. A small, VC-free team out-trusted big rivals by giving the code away and never locking anyone in. Only about $15K/mo — but near-pure profit, and a community that defends them.
01How the money moves
Dev quits job, ships a free self-host PaaS (2021)
→
Coolify grows via community trust to 58k stars
→
Charges for managed Cloud + sponsors: $15.7K/mo
02The numbers
$15.7K/moStatedgross, self-reported
2025-02
the sentence on the page
Andras Bacsai on X: "💵 Coolify is highly profitable—at least in my opinion. In February: 💰Gross income: $15,700 (Cloud ~$10.5k + donations ~$5.2k) 💸 Expenses: $2,800 🤑Net income (before tax):…
Founder publishes monthly income; the core product is free, so users dwarf payers. Andras on X, Feb 2025
Bootstrapped and profitable: net about $12.9K/mo on $2.8K costs (Feb 2025).
🔒
You have the verdict. Members get the work behind it.
- The CENTS scorecard — where it's strong, where it's soft
- The founder's key move, and the counter-move
- How it could die — the evidence, and how sure we are
- The case against our own call
- A 🚀 launchpad prompt — the case, as a plan for your business
We rate our own confidence — and argue against ourselves. Nobody else in this category does.
Sources always public on all 560 cases · cancel anytime · 14-day refund
See a full teardown, free → ImportYetiSourcesSources last checked 25 August 2026
Andras Bacsai on X — Feb 2025 income breakdown ($15.7K gross, $12.9K net)Open Collective — coolLabs public financesGitHub — coollabsio/coolify (58.2k stars, 280+ services)Andras Bacsai — Why I left my stable job in a pandemicBehind the Source podcast — Coolify with Andras Bacsai
Revenue is first-party and disclosed: Andras Bacsai publicly posted Feb 2025 gross income of $15,700/mo (Cloud about $10.5K + donations about $5.2K), net about $12.9K on $2.8K costs, and coolLabs' finances are public on Open Collective — so STATED, verified. By 2026 the Open Collective transparency page shows growth (hosted MRR about $15K+, GitHub Sponsors about $4.5K/mo, OC about $1.2K/mo), so current all-in is higher (roughly $20K/mo); I anchored the exact tweet to stay precise. The often-repeated 'turned down 30 investors' figure comes from a third-party blog, so I used only his documented first-party stance (refused VC, wanted bootstrapped). Rival GitHub-star bars (Dokku, Dokploy, CapRover) are approximate. 58.2k stars and 280+ services are from GitHub. No drama fabricated — the refuse-VC and radical-transparency story is documented in his own posts. We never score you.