Compare
Kubernetes power, without the tax
See how Coswarm stacks up against raw Kubernetes and hand-rolled Docker Swarm on the things that actually slow teams down.
Compare
Coswarm vs. the alternatives
How a Docker Swarm–based PaaS compares to raw Kubernetes and hand-rolled Swarm.
| Coswarm | Kubernetes | Manual Swarm | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to first deploy | One command, minutes | Hours to days | Manual, multi-step |
| Learning curve | Familiar Docker concepts | Steep — many new abstractions | Moderate |
| Control-plane pieces | Single control plane | etcd, API server, controllers, kubelet… | You wire it yourself |
| Web UI | Built in | Add-on (Dashboard / Lens) | None |
| SSL + load balancing | Built-in smart proxy | Ingress controller setup | Manual (Traefik / Nginx) |
| Automated backups | Built in | Add-on (Velero, etc.) | Do it yourself |
| Runs on your servers | Yes — fully self-hosted | Yes, or managed | Yes |
| Cost | Free | Free core; managed costs extra | Free |
Comparison reflects out-of-the-box defaults. Kubernetes remains the right tool for very large, multi-team platforms.
Why Coswarm
You wanted to ship an app — not run a control plane
Kubernetes is powerful, but most teams pay for complexity they never needed. Coswarm keeps the power and drops the tax.
The Kubernetes way
- Days of cluster setup before the first deploy
- etcd, API server, controllers, kubelet to operate
- YAML for every service, ingress, and secret
- Bolt on a dashboard, ingress, backups, and TLS yourself
The Coswarm way
- One command, running in about a minute
- A single control plane you can actually reason about
- Deploy from a web UI on your own domain
- SSL, load balancing, backups, and RBAC built in
Your own PaaS is one command away
Install Coswarm on your server and deploy your first container in minutes — free, self-hosted, and yours to keep.
bash install.sh
$ curl -fsSL https://coswarm.dev/install.sh | bash