Coolify VPS requirements: how big a server for Coolify plus your apps

Sizing guide

Our recommendations, derived from the sourced figures below. Not measurements.

Official requirements

What people report in practice

Individual reports, not controlled tests. Versions, hardware and settings differ, so treat these as data points, not guarantees.

• Coolify's six containers summed 224–310 MiB at idle, but the 1 GB host already showed 578 MiB used plus 323 MiB in swap before any app existed. A small Nixpacks Node build succeeded, peaking at 840 MiB RAM used and 1,097 MiB of swap. Disk used went from 5.9 GB (fresh) to 12 GB after install and one build

  Third-party test on a 1 vCPU / 1 GB Vultr plan with a 2.3 GB swapfile, one run of about 30 minutes, measured 2026-09-26

  Independent test StackFreeks: Coolify 1GB RAM VPS, what it actually used · checked Oct 22, 2026

• Builds hung at npm ci and Coolify became unresponsive on a 2 GB server running 2 PHP apps, MySQL and a SvelteKit app. Adding 6 GB of swap fixed it; another user on a 2 GB Hetzner server confirmed swap solved the same problem

  Hetzner CPX11 (2 vCPU AMD, 2 GB RAM), Coolify v4 beta, 2024

  GitHub GitHub coollabsio/coolify #2088: Nixpacks build gets stuck, Coolify unresponsive · checked Oct 22, 2026

• Coolify's founder: the build is CPU and memory intensive; fixes are adding swap ("you can easily make 10GB of swap"), a dedicated build server, building in GitHub Actions and deploying only the image, or more resources

  Maintainer reply in the same issue (Apr 2024)

  GitHub GitHub coollabsio/coolify #2088 (maintainer comment) · checked Oct 22, 2026

• A Next.js rebuild with cache pushed the Node build process to ~3.6 GB, load average above 70, and the dashboard returned Gateway Timeout until the process was killed; a no-cache Force Deploy worked

  8 GB server with no swap, Ubuntu 24.04, Coolify v4.0.0-beta.420.6 (2025); issue still open when checked

  GitHub GitHub coollabsio/coolify #6656: Next.js rebuild consumes all memory · checked Oct 22, 2026

• 8 GB Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 ran Coolify 24/7 but ran out of heap memory while building a second Nuxt project; a 2 GB Pi was "really only useable as monitor instance"

  Contributor comment, Coolify v4 beta, 2024

  GitHub GitHub coollabsio/coolify #2781: Coolify randomly crashes Raspberry Pi 4B+ · checked Oct 22, 2026

What drives Coolify's RAM use

Builds, not the dashboard

Coolify builds each app on its deployment server by default (with Nixpacks, a Dockerfile or Docker Compose). npm ci, next build and similar steps can use several GB for a few minutes, and on the single-server setup that memory comes from the same pool as the dashboard, the proxy and your running apps. That is why the issue tracker is full of "Coolify unresponsive during deploy" reports on 2 GB servers. The build server option, or building in CI and deploying a prebuilt image, takes this off the box entirely.

Coolify's own stack

A self-hosted install runs several containers: the Coolify app with its queue workers, PostgreSQL, Redis, a realtime (websocket) server, the Traefik proxy that routes your domains and handles HTTPS, and Sentinel for metrics. Together they idle in a few hundred MB, which is small next to builds and databases.

Your apps and databases

Everything you deploy adds its own RAM on top. A Postgres or MySQL container per app adds up quickly, so sharing one database server between small apps saves memory. For specific apps, use their own pages, such as n8n, Immich or Nextcloud, and add the totals in the stack calculator.

Docker images and disk

Every deploy leaves images and build cache behind. Coolify's automated Docker cleanup runs daily by default and can wait for a disk threshold (80% by default). On a 20–40 GB VPS disk, plan for images, not just your data.

Gotchas on a VPS

• Add swap before your first build. Many VPS images ship with no swap (the 2 GB Hetzner users in #2088 had none). Without it, a build that briefly needs more RAM than you have freezes the whole server instead of just running slower. Coolify's founder suggests up to 10 GB of swap on SSD.
• Use a fresh server. The docs recommend a fresh server. Validating a server can install Docker and restart the Docker service, so existing containers on it may briefly go down (Servers overview, checked 2026-10-22).
• Back up the installer secrets. After installing, back up /data/coolify/source/.env. The docs list it as a step in the automated install, and you need it to restore the instance.
• Docker cleanup costs CPU. Coolify warns that cleanup can be CPU-intensive. On a 1–2 vCPU plan, schedule it for a quiet hour. Leave volume deletion off unless you're sure, because volumes hold your databases.
• ARM servers are a good fit. Coolify supports arm64, and its example production server is an ARM Hetzner CAX11. Make sure your apps' images have arm64 builds, and that a separate build server uses the same CPU architecture as the deployment server, which the build-server docs require.
• Set memory limits per app. One runaway app or build can starve the dashboard. Coolify lets you set CPU and memory limits per resource; use them on small servers so a bad deploy can't take everything else down.

Cheapest plans that fit

Coolify (official minimum): 2 GB RAM or more

Threshold: Official minimum (2 cores, 2 GB RAM) (source). Also check vCPU: at least 2.

Coolify, building apps on the same server: 4 GB RAM or more

Threshold: VPSfit recommendation: 2 GB servers stalled building ordinary apps (GitHub #2088), and Coolify's own 4 GB example server averages 2.6 GB with builds done elsewhere (source). Also check vCPU: at least 2.

Prices checked Oct 21, 2026 on each provider's official pricing page. EUR prices converted at the ECB rate of Oct 20, 2026 (1 € = $1.1215) only for ranking. See all plans on the cheapest 4 GB VPS page.

Related pages

• n8n requirements: A popular one-click service in Coolify; check its own RAM needs before adding it.
• Immich requirements: Heavy on RAM with machine learning on, so it often needs its own server.
• Nextcloud requirements: Pair it with a shared database to keep a Coolify box small.