Self-hosted PaaS on Docker
Anyport vs Peon
Peon and Anyport are the two closest products on this page in shape, and the furthest apart underneath. Both put a hosted control plane in front of infrastructure you own and pay for directly, and both give you project roles and an audit log on the standard tier rather than an enterprise one. Peon deploys Docker to Linux servers. Anyport deploys to Kubernetes.
The second difference is the direction of the connection. Peon's documented server requirements include an SSH port reachable from the Peon control plane, so the platform connects in. Anyport's agent dials out, so the cluster exposes nothing. If your servers can accept that connection, the difference costs you nothing and Peon is the lighter tool.
What both of them do
This much is common ground, so the table below is only about where they differ.
- A hosted control plane in front of servers you own and pay for directly.
- Push to a Git branch and it builds and rolls out.
- Automatic HTTPS, custom domains and preview deployments.
- Managed databases with scheduled backups to your own storage.
- Roles, an audit log and scheduled tasks without an enterprise tier.
- Logs and a terminal into a running container.
Where they differ
The short answer first, and the detail underneath it where the short answer would otherwise mislead.
| Peon | Anyport | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Peon A self-hosted PaaS for Docker Run it on their cloud, or run the whole thing yourself. | Anyport A hosted control plane For Kubernetes clusters you already run. |
| Runtime | Peon Docker Traefik or Caddy in front. Kubernetes is not a documented target. | Anyport Kubernetes Anyport can install k3s on a bare machine if you do not have a cluster. |
| Where the control plane runs | Peon Their cloud, or yours Self-hosting it needs Node.js 20 or newer, pnpm and PostgreSQL. | Anyport Hosted by us There is nothing for you to install, upgrade or back up. |
| How it reaches your infrastructure | Peon It connects in, over SSH You give it a workspace SSH key and the login to use. | Anyport Your cluster connects out The agent dials us and holds one connection open. |
| What your infrastructure must expose | Peon SSH, plus ports 80 and 443 Their requirements: the SSH port must be reachable from the Peon control plane. | Anyport Nothing No inbound port, no public IP, no reachable API server. |
| More than one machine | Peon You pick the server per service Servers are connected to a workspace one at a time. | Anyport The cluster schedules it Anyport connects clusters, not individual machines. |
| AI and MCP | Peon Hosted MCP and an in-app assistant You bring your own OpenAI or Anthropic key. | Anyport An MCP server in the CLI It runs on your machine over stdio and is read-only until you opt in. There is no assistant in the console. |
| Price | Peon 3 dollars per project a month Or 30 a year, with unlimited servers and seats. Self-hosting is free. | Anyport Free today Up to 10 private and 20 public clusters. Compute is never metered. |
| Compliance | Peon See their site SSO, SAML and SCIM are on the Enterprise tier. | Anyport Not certified yet Controls are published in full on the security page instead. |
What Peon is
Taken from their own documentation, read on 4 September 2026.
Peon is an open-source, self-hostable deployment platform. You connect Linux servers over SSH, and it installs Docker and a reverse proxy, Traefik by default with Caddy as an option, then deploys applications and databases onto those servers.
Its documented server requirements are 64-bit Linux with SSH, root or sudo for the first Docker install, ports 80 and 443 open for public HTTP traffic, and an SSH port reachable from the Peon control plane.
Its units are workspace, project, service and server. A service is a Git application, a Dockerfile, a Docker image, a Nixpacks build, a static site, a Compose stack or a database. Kubernetes is not among them.
Peon Cloud hosts the control plane at 3 US dollars per project per month, or 30 dollars a year, with unlimited servers and unlimited team members. Self-hosting it is free and documented as needing Node.js 20 or newer, pnpm and PostgreSQL. An Enterprise tier adds SSO, SAML, SCIM and white label.
Choose Peon if
- Your services are Docker or Docker Compose, and Kubernetes is overhead you would be paying for nothing.
- Your servers can accept an SSH connection from a control plane, so an outbound-only agent buys you nothing.
- You want the option of running the whole platform, control plane included, on your own hardware.
- You want an assistant inside the console and a hosted MCP endpoint. Anyport's MCP server runs on your machine and there is no assistant.
- A flat 3 dollars a project is a bill you can predict, and you would rather pay it than sit on someone's free tier.
Choose Anyport if
- The workloads are already on Kubernetes, and running Docker over SSH beside it means operating two things.
- Some clusters sit behind NAT, at an edge site, or inside a customer's network, where nothing can SSH in.
- You need what Kubernetes gives you and Docker does not: operators, CRDs, autoscaling, an existing network policy.
- You want managed Postgres, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis, ClickHouse or Qdrant run by operators on your own hardware.
- You have several clusters and want one console, one set of roles and one audit log over all of them.
Questions
- Does Peon support Kubernetes?
- Not in its documentation. A Peon service is a Git application, a Dockerfile, a Docker image, a Nixpacks build, a static site, a Compose stack or a database, deployed onto Linux servers over SSH. Kubernetes is not a documented target.
- Can Peon deploy to a server nothing can connect to?
- Its documented server requirements include an SSH port reachable from the Peon control plane, so the control plane is the side that connects. A machine with no inbound route does not meet that requirement. This is the difference the page turns on, so it is worth reading on their site rather than taking from ours.
- Does Anyport have an AI assistant?
- Not in the console. The Anyport CLI ships an MCP server that runs on your own machine over stdio, so an agent you already use can read your projects, applications, services and logs. It serves read tools only until you explicitly allow more.
- What does Anyport require of a cluster?
- A Kubernetes cluster you can run one command against, or a bare Linux machine where Anyport installs k3s first. No inbound port, no public IP, no load balancer that can obtain one, and no kubeconfig handed to us. The agent opens a connection outward and holds it open.
- What does Anyport cost?
- Every feature is free today, for everyone on your team, on up to 10 private clusters and 20 public ones. Compute is never metered because it is not ours. The one counted resource is traffic our gateway carries for clusters with no public address of their own, with an allowance of 10 GiB a month.
- Is Anyport audited or certified?
- Not yet. In place of a report, the security page documents what the agent runs with inside your cluster, what crosses the boundary and how secrets are stored, so a reviewer can evaluate the controls directly. Two of them hold regardless of certification: we never receive credentials for your Kubernetes API, and your workloads keep serving whether or not our control plane is reachable.
Sources
Read on 4 September 2026. If one of these pages now says something different, the source is right and this page is stale.
If Anyport is the one you want
Connecting a cluster is one command and takes a few minutes. Everything is free today, and the pricing page lists the limits that are actually enforced rather than the ones a plan would imply.