Hey r/selfhosted, My friend Antoine and I have spent the last 1.5 years building [Disco](https://disco.cloud/), **an open-source PaaS** to...
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The original was posted on /r/selfhosted by /u/gregsadetsky on 2025-07-08 16:38:21+00:00.

Hey r/selfhosted,

My friend Antoine and I have spent the last 1.5 years building Disco, an open-source PaaS to scratch our own itch. We love the existing tools, but kept hitting specific walls.

tldr; We built an open-source, MIT-licensed PaaS that:

  • Lets you scale beyond a single server.
  • Uses API keys for team access, not SSH keys.
  • Has a simple CLI and web UI without overwhelming configuration.
  • Includes built-in database management (disco postgres create).
  • Is funded by optional managed services, so that the code can remain free and open.

The Backstory

For context, I was paying hundreds per month on Heroku and Render for hobby projects, while Antoine’s client (Idealist.org) was getting hit with expensive staging environment bills. We looked for self-hosted alternatives, but found:

  • Dokku: Great, but locked us to single servers and required managing SSH access for teams.
  • Coolify: Powerful, but we found the sheer number of configuration options overwhelming.
  • Kamal: Brilliant for deployment, but we wanted integrated database management and other platform features built-in.

What is Disco?

Disco was built to fill that gap. It’s designed to be a simple, scalable, and developer-friendly platform.

  • Scale Beyond One Server: Easily add and manage multiple servers in a cluster.
  • Simple & Secure Team Management: Give a teammate an API key to deploy. Revoke it just as easily. No more passing around SSH keys to production.
  • Fast Deploys: Thanks to Docker’s layer caching, deploys are usually under 30 seconds.
  • “Just Works” Databases: When you need a quick database for a project, disco postgres create sets one up for you instantly.

We’ve been running a Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB RAM) at the Recurse Center and it’s hosting 50+ web apps without breaking a sweat. Idealist.org moved their staging environments to their own infrastructure using Disco and saw their costs drop significantly.

Getting Started

Getting started is minimal. A typical FastAPI project needs a simple Dockerfile and an 8-line disco.json file. We have a tutorial for deploying that stack on any VPS (Digital Ocean, EC2, etc.).

Our Philosophy & Business Model

The project is MIT licensed because we want this to be a dependable self-hosting option with no lock-in.

To keep the project alive without burning out, we also offer managed services for teams who want to migrate off Heroku (to AWS, for example) without managing infrastructure themselves. Revenue from paid services goes directly into improving the open-source version for everyone.

If you’ve felt stuck between expensive PaaS bills and infrastructure complexity, we’d love for you to check it out and hear your thoughts. Happy to answer any questions!

Cheers

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