What is NebulaCtrl?

NebulaCtrl is a self-hosted platform for running your apps on servers you own. You connect a Linux machine with Docker, point NebulaCtrl at a Git repository or a container image, and it builds, starts, routes and watches the result. There is no Kubernetes, no Swarm and no hosted service in the middle: one control plane, one small agent per server, and plain Docker underneath.

If you have used Heroku, Railway or Coolify, the shape is familiar. The difference is that everything runs on machines you control, and the interface is a canvas where you see your services and the lines between them.

NebulaCtrl is free to use and runs on your own servers. The source is coming soon, under the AGPL-3.0; until it is published, the installer, the container images and the CLI are all downloadable without an account: the installer from nebulactrl.com, the images from the public registry ghcr.io/nebulactrl/nebulactrl, the CLI from your own control plane.

What you get#

• Deploys from Git or an image. Push to a branch and deploy, or pull ghcr.io/you/app:1.4. A repository without a Dockerfile is built with Railpack. See builds.
• A deploy you can trust. A new version is started and health-checked before traffic moves to it, and a failed deploy leaves the old one serving. See deployments.
• Domains and HTTPS. Every server runs a proxy that gets Let's Encrypt certificates for you. See domains and proxy routes.
• Variables and secrets that are encrypted at rest, can refer to each other (${{db.DATABASE_URL}}), and are never shown again once saved. See variables and secrets.
• Databases and backups: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Valkey and more, with scheduled backups. See managed databases.
• Previews, scaling, scheduled tasks, a web terminal, and a catalogue of one-click templates.
• Several servers in one place, including machines behind a home router: agents dial out, so no inbound port is needed for the control plane.
• A CLI and an API that do everything the dashboard does. See the CLI reference and the API reference.

How the pieces fit#

   you ──► dashboard / CLI / API ──► control plane ──► Postgres
                                          ▲
                           outbound WebSocket from each agent
                                          │
             server A: agent ─ proxy ─ your containers
             server B: agent ─ proxy ─ your containers

• The control plane is one Go program with a Postgres database. It holds your projects, settings and history, and tells agents what to run.
• An agent runs on each server. It builds images, starts containers, runs health checks and reports back. It connects out to the control plane, so servers behind NAT work.
• A proxy (Traefik) on each server terminates HTTPS and routes each domain to the right container. The agent manages it; you never edit its config.

The control plane can go down without stopping your apps. Containers keep running; you only lose the ability to change things until it is back.

What it is not#

NebulaCtrl is for a trusted team running its own infrastructure. A NebulaCtrl administrator is a root administrator of every connected server, because Docker access is root. It is not a way to host strangers' code safely. Read the threat model and the known limitations before you rely on it.

Where next#

1. Learn the vocabulary: projects, environments, services, servers and staged changes.
2. Follow the quickstart: from a bare machine to a running app with a domain and a database.