Blog · Alternatives
Best Easypanel alternatives in 2026: free panels and managed hosting
Easypanel's free plan stops at three projects, and the fourth means a licence: $14.9 a month for each server, on top of the server's rent. The best Easypanel alternatives in 2026 come in three kinds: a free open-source panel such as Coolify or Dokploy, on a server you still look after; the same panel hosted for you; and managed hosting, where the server is looked after too. Pethost is the third kind: €9.99 a month for a machine of 2 vCPU, 3 GB and 30 GB, with the panel, backups and updates in the price.
- Easypanel pricing: Free is 3 projects, without backups, API, MCP or CLI. Hobby is $14.9 a server a month ($10.9 paid annually).
- The whole cost: the server is rented apart. Hobby and a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB DigitalOcean Droplet are $38.90 a month.
- Open-source panels: Coolify and Dokploy charge no licence fee and set no project limit, on a server that stays yours to rent, update, secure and back up. Their hosted panels, $5 a month for two servers and $4.50 a server, run the panel only.
- Managed hosting: Pethost is the machine and the panel together, looked after, for €9.99 a month: the best value we found. Its 3 GB of always-on memory are $16.06 on Elestio, €28.80 on Sliplane, $30 at Railway's rates and $39 on Render.
Easypanel pricing in 2026: the licence, the free plan and its limits
Easypanel is a panel you install on your own server to run apps, databases and Compose projects. It is sold as a licence per server: each server that runs Easypanel needs its own. We found no hosted version, so the licence always comes on top of a server you rent.
| Plan | Paid monthly | Paid annually | What the plan lists |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | $0 | Up to 3 projects, unlimited services and deployments |
| Hobby | $14.9 | $10.9 | Unlimited projects, database backups, notifications, the API, MCP and CLI |
| Growth | $23.9 | $16.9 | Multiple users, access control |
| Business | $37.9 | $29.9 | Cluster support (alpha), white-labeling, priority support |
The free plan's limits
Three projects, with as many services inside them as you like. The plan table leaves out of Free: database and volume backups, notifications, the API, the MCP server, the CLI and a custom service domain. So the fourth project, or the first backup, is the Hobby licence.
The whole cost of Easypanel: the licence and a server
Easypanel asks for a fresh Ubuntu server with at least 2 GB of RAM; with a few apps beside the panel we count 2 vCPU and 4 GB. At DigitalOcean, which Easypanel's documentation lists with a ready image, a Droplet of that size is $24 a month.
| Plan | Licence | Droplet | Together |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free, 3 projects | $0 | $24.00 | $24.00 |
| Hobby, paid annually | $10.9 | $24.00 | $34.90 |
| Hobby, paid monthly | $14.9 | $24.00 | $38.90 |
Still to add: storage for backups off the server, and your hours for the operating system, the firewall and the panel's updates. For scale, our Starter machine is €9.99 a month with the panel, nightly backups off the machine and security updates in the price.
Why people look for Easypanel alternatives
A licence for every server, and closed source
A second server is a second licence, and running several as one is an alpha feature of the Business plan, $37.9 a server a month. Easypanel's own comparison with Coolify says its core platform is closed source: only the template definitions are public. We found no public list of its security advisories; the vendor reports two independent audits.
Backups are paid, and volumes have no restore action
Database backups come with the paid plans, to a destination you set up. Volume backups cover the named volumes of App and Box services, so not those of a Compose service, and they are a mirror: the documentation says they have no retention per run and no restore action.
For an AI agent: four general tools, on paid plans
Release 2.33.0 of 31 July 2026 added an official MCP server of four tools: one searches the panel's operations, and three run them, as a read, a change or a destructive action. Hosting with an official MCP server compares such designs.
What Easypanel does well
It is a guided panel with paid support. It runs a Compose file from pasted YAML or a Git repository, with logs filtered by service, time and level. Its catalogue has 750+ open-source services, backups go to Dropbox, Google Drive or FTP as well as S3, and several providers sell a server with the panel already on it.
Coolify vs Dokploy vs Easypanel: the self-hosted PaaS comparison
The first kind of alternative is an open-source self-hosted PaaS: Coolify or Dokploy, on your own server. Pethost is in the last row for scale.
| Panel | Licence and fee | A compose.yaml | Backups | For an AI agent | The server |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easypanel | Closed source. Free for 3 projects, then $14.9 a server a month | Runs it | Paid plans; no restore action for volumes | MCP of 4 general tools, on paid plans | Yours: at least 2 GB of RAM |
| Coolify | Apache-2.0. No fee for the panel | Runs it, parsed and extended | On a schedule; the S3 storage is yours | MCP of about 45 tools, 3 of them change anything | Yours: 2 CPU cores and 2 GB for the panel |
| Dokploy | Apache-2.0, paid extras source-available. No fee for the panel | Runs it with docker compose | Named volumes, to an S3 bucket you set up | MCP of 508 tools: every API endpoint | Yours: at least 2 GB of RAM |
| Pethost | A hosted service: €9.99 a month with the machine | Runs it as written | Nightly, off the machine, kept 14 days | MCP of 13 tools made for agents, and a skill | Included and looked after: 2 vCPU, 3 GB, 30 GB |
Dokploy is still 0.x, and since 21 January 2026 its future paid features are source-available. The self-hosted panels compared adds CapRover and Dokku.
What an open-source panel does not change
The server. It is still yours to rent, patch and secure. In 2026, 61 security advisories were published on Coolify's repository, 16 of them critical (their fixes are in builds before v4.0.0), and 56 on Dokploy's, 33 critical. Each is closed by an update, and on your own server installing it is your job.
The second kind changes little here: Coolify Cloud, $5 a month for two servers, and Dokploy Cloud, $4.50 a server, run the panel only, and the servers under them stay yours. See Coolify Cloud vs Dokploy Cloud.
Managed hosting instead of Easypanel: what 3 GB of memory cost
The third kind takes the server off your hands: no licence, no operating system to patch. Compare what a server gives its apps, memory that is always on: 3 GB, the size of our Starter machine, at each managed host's plan prices.
| Host | Price a month |
|---|---|
| Pethost Starter: 2 vCPU, 3 GB | €9.99 |
| Elestio: 2 vCPU, 4 GB at Netcup | $16.06 |
| Railway: the memory alone | $30.00 |
| Sliplane: 3 vCPU, 4 GB | €28.80 |
| Render: 2 GB and two of 512 MB | $39.00 |
Sliplane prices per server as we do: its €9 server is 1 vCPU and 1 GB, and the first that holds 3 GB is €28.80. Railway's $30 is memory alone: CPU, disk and traffic come on top. Plan by plan: Railway vs Render vs Fly.io pricing.
Or take a usual set of side projects: three small web apps, a bot and a Postgres. That is €9.99 a month on Pethost, $19.71 on Elestio, $23.15 on Railway counting memory alone, on our assumption of use, €28.80 on Sliplane and $34.75 on Render. On Pethost the Postgres is a container in your project, in the nightly backup: not a managed database with replicas or point-in-time recovery.
What €9.99 a month buys against Easypanel and a server
- 2 vCPU, 3 GB, 30 GB a virtual machine of your own
- 14 nights of backups you can restore
- 13 MCP tools for your agent
Starter is €9.99 a month without VAT, and what Easypanel leaves to you, or sells in the licence, is done on it. There is no limit of three: as many projects, containers and databases as fit (see unlimited projects for one flat fee). Every project is a Compose project, and each night it is backed up with its volumes: encrypted, off the machine, restored from the panel or by your agent. Security updates install themselves, every request is logged for 30 days, and HTTPS, deploys from GitHub and SSH into any container are included.
That is the best value we found among Easypanel's alternatives: 3 GB for €9.99, where the managed hosts of the chart ask $16.06 to $39, and Easypanel's Hobby licence alone is $14.9 before the server. There is no free tier: €9.99 rents a real machine, so nothing sleeps. Grow, twice the size, is €17.99.
Restoring a volume, the action Easypanel's volume backups lack, is one sentence to your agent:
You say: The migration broke the shop's database. Put last night's back.
- GetProject shop: 14 snapshots, the newest from last night
- RunProjectAction restore_snapshot: volume pgdata
- GetOperation succeeded
The agent answers: pgdata is back as it was last night. The broken state was backed up first, so this can be undone.
What if I just rent a VPS and install a free panel?
You can: Coolify and Dokploy install on the kind of server Easypanel runs on. An agent on a bare server works as root over SSH: nothing tells it what runs there, and one wrong command takes down the proxy, a database or the firewall. On Pethost it works through 13 tools, and its shell is inside your containers, never on the machine.
And a server is not sure to cost less. Hetzner is the one guides and AI assistants name first, at prices it no longer has: it raised them on 1 April and on 15 June 2026, and its cheap Cost-Optimized range has long been out of stock. Those servers are hardware it bought at good prices, before the RAM shortage, and on 5 October every plan of the range was marked “not available”. The 2 vCPU, 4 GB server it does sell, CPX22, is €19.49 a month, up from €7.99, and €23.89 with an IPv4 address and Hetzner's backups. On top come the panel, for which Coolify asks 2 CPU cores and 2 GB of RAM, the storage for backups, and your hours. Starter is €9.99 with those done.
Who Pethost is for
Pethost is the best pick for
- Developers tired of looking after a server, and of a licence on top: the machine, the panel and its updates are one price
- Solo developers with more than three side projects: as many as fit in 3 GB, on one bill of €9.99
- People who build with Claude Code, Codex or Cursor: the agent deploys, reads the logs, rolls back and restores
- Early startups that want one fixed bill, and backups they can restore
Look elsewhere if
- Your application needs a cluster of several servers, several regions or autoscaling: here one machine is the limit
Questions
What is the best Easypanel alternative in 2026?
Pethost, if you would rather not look after a server or pay a licence for it: €9.99 a month for a machine of 2 vCPU, 3 GB and 30 GB with the panel, backups and updates included, the best value we found. Of the self-hosted panels, Coolify and Dokploy are open source with no project limit, on a server that stays yours to look after.
Does Easypanel have a free tier, and what are its limits?
Easypanel's free plan is $0 for up to 3 projects, with unlimited services inside them. Its plan table leaves out of Free: database and volume backups, notifications, the API, the MCP server and the CLI. The server it runs on is rented apart.
How much does an Easypanel license cost in 2026?
The licence is per server: Hobby is $14.9 a month paid monthly or $10.9 paid annually, Growth $23.9 and Business $37.9 paid monthly. The server comes on top: with a 2 vCPU, 4 GiB DigitalOcean Droplet at $24, Hobby is $38.90 a month. Pethost's €9.99 a month is the machine, the panel and the backups together.
Coolify vs Dokploy vs Easypanel: which is open source?
Coolify is Apache-2.0, and so is Dokploy outside a directory of paid features. Easypanel's core is closed source, by its own description. With all three the server is yours to look after; on Pethost it is looked after, and a project stays a Docker Compose file that runs anywhere else Docker does.
Read from each vendor's own pages and repositories on 5 October 2026. Prices are in each vendor's currency; ours are without VAT. Sums, and counts of tools and advisories, are ours.
- Easypanel: pricing
- Easypanel: installation
- Easypanel: providers
- Easypanel: Compose
- Easypanel: backups
- Easypanel: volume backups
- Easypanel: MCP
- Easypanel: changelog
- Easypanel on Coolify
- DigitalOcean: Droplets
- Coolify: pricing
- Coolify: installation
- Coolify: Compose
- Coolify: backups
- Coolify: MCP
- Coolify: advisories
- Dokploy: pricing
- Dokploy: installation
- Dokploy: Compose
- Dokploy: backups
- Dokploy: Cloud
- Dokploy: licence
- Dokploy: MCP
- Dokploy: releases
- Dokploy: advisories
- Elestio: pricing
- Sliplane: pricing
- Railway: plans
- Render: pricing
- Hetzner: Cost-Optimized
- Hetzner: price adjustment
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