Canine
Shares rank 14 of 19 deployment tools by recommenders
Free, open source, self-hosted platform that adds a Heroku-like deploy experience on top of your Kubernetes cluster. Caveat: critics say the docs are thin and some API reference links return 404.
Free, open source, self-hosted platform that adds a Heroku-like deploy experience on top of your Kubernetes cluster. Caveat: critics say the docs are thin and some API reference links return 404.
8 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 75%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 2 years
Median of the 8 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Heroku-like PaaS on Kubernetes
“Basically a self hosted, FOSS that turns a Kubernetes cluster into something as easy to use as Heroku.”
Comment from 6 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: What are you working on?” “I’ve been working on an open source tool that turns your Kubernetes into a Heroku like PaaS”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)” “makes it dead simple to turn your Kubernetes environment into a Heroku like PaaS”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell” - Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (January 2026)”
- Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)”
- Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)”
Simplifies Kubernetes for most uses
“Basically a self hosted, FOSS that turns a Kubernetes cluster into something as easy to use as Heroku.”
Comment from 6 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: What are you working on?” “simplify it massively for 90% of use cases but still give full k8s api for any more advanced features”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “Railway Global Outage” “gives you a sensible deployment platform on top of k8s with one install”
Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “What job interviews taught me about Kubernetes” - Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (January 2026)”
Free and open source, no paywall
“I've been developing an open source Heroku alternative so we may never again be gouged for nice deployment pipelines.”
Comment from 6 Feb 2026 in “An Update on Heroku” “We've been building canine.sh free and open source for an enterprise ready deployment platform.”
Comment from 25 May 2026 in “The bootstrapper's EU stack for under €10 per month” “Canine is 100% FOSS. No hidden features behind some payment plan or anything.”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)” - Comment from 10 Nov 2025 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)”
Compared to Coolify and Dokploy
“Is canine for kubernetes as coolify is for docker? Lovely!”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell” “it's to Kubernetes what Coolify or Dokploy is to Docker”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Go ahead, self-host Postgres”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Docs missing or broken links
“The docs seem to be non existent.”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “Railway Global Outage” “API Reference returns a 404 btw”
Comment from 18 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: Those making $500/month on side projects in 2025 – Show and tell”
Other deployment tools people recommend
The four most recommended other deployment tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 19 deployment tools, rankedWhat people said
23 of the 25 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Basically a self hosted, FOSS that turns a Kubernetes cluster into something as easy to use as Heroku.”
“I feel like even after all these years we’re still missing the devex that Heroku provided.”
“gives you a sensible deployment platform on top of k8s with one install”
“gives you a heroku like interface to deploy applications to”
“We've been building canine.sh free and open source for an enterprise ready deployment platform.”
“We just passed 2000 developers last month actively deploying with canine.”
“I’ve been working on an open source tool that turns your Kubernetes into a Heroku like PaaS”
“simplify it massively for 90% of use cases but still give full k8s api for any more advanced features”
“Looks like a great product”
“The docs seem to be non existent.”
“Offers all the same features without the potential of a vendor lock-in / price gouging.”
“I've been developing an open source Heroku alternative so we may never again be gouged for nice deployment pipelines.”
“basically turns your kubernetes into a developer friendly PaaS”
“it's to Kubernetes what Coolify or Dokploy is to Docker”
“API Reference returns a 404 btw”
“Is canine for kubernetes as coolify is for docker? Lovely!”
“That's exactly what I've been looking for my homelab.”
“makes it dead simple to turn your Kubernetes environment into a Heroku like PaaS”
“Canine is 100% FOSS. No hidden features behind some payment plan or anything.”
“an open source, self hosted PaaS for Kubernetes”
“This is exactly why we built https://canine.sh , to try to rebuild Heroku in the open source”
“This looks really cool, will try it out!”
“a free, open source Heroku alternative for 2 years now”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.