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
58.2k
GitHub stars
GitHub
$15.7K/mo
gross income, Feb 2025
founder X
280+
one-click services
GitHub
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).
🔒
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(demo: preview the full teardown)Sourcesupdated · daily
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.