Docker

Anyport vs Peon

Peon

Docker

Traefik or Caddy in front. Kubernetes is not a documented target.

Runtime

Anyport

Kubernetes

Anyport can install k3s on a bare machine if you do not have a cluster.

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.

01Common ground

What both of them do

This much both products do, 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.

02The differences

Where they differ

Each row asks one question and sets the two answers across a seam. The highlighted row is the one this comparison turns on.

Peon	Question	Anyport
Peon A self-hosted PaaS for Docker Run it on their cloud, or run the whole thing yourself.	What it is	Anyport A hosted control plane For Kubernetes clusters you already run.
Peon Docker Traefik or Caddy in front. Kubernetes is not a documented target.	Runtime	Anyport Kubernetes Anyport can install k3s on a bare machine if you do not have a cluster.
Peon Their cloud, or yours Self-hosting it needs Node.js 20 or newer, pnpm and PostgreSQL.	Where the control plane runs	Anyport Hosted by us There is nothing for you to install, upgrade or back up.
Peon It connects in, over SSH You give it a workspace SSH key and the login to use.	How it reaches your infrastructure	Anyport Your cluster connects out The agent dials us and holds one connection open.
Peon SSH, plus ports 80 and 443 Their requirements: the SSH port must be reachable from the Peon control plane.	What your infrastructure must expose	Anyport Nothing No inbound port, no public IP, no reachable API server.
Peon You pick the server per service Servers are connected to a workspace one at a time.	More than one machine	Anyport The cluster schedules it Anyport connects clusters, not individual machines.
Peon Hosted MCP and an in-app assistant You bring your own OpenAI or Anthropic key.	AI and MCP	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.
Peon 3 dollars per project a month Or 30 a year, with unlimited servers and seats. Self-hosting is free.	Price	Anyport $5/mo or $50/yr 3 clusters free, then $2 a month each, billed by the hour. Compute on your own clusters is never metered.
Peon See their site SSO, SAML and SCIM are on the Enterprise tier.	Compliance	Anyport Not certified yet Controls are published in full on the security page instead.

03The decision

Which one to choose

Each list is written to be true. If the first one describes you, the better product is theirs.

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.
You bill per project rather than per cluster, and at your shape a flat 3 dollars a project comes out under 5 dollars a month for the clusters behind it.

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.
You have no server yet. Anyport Cloud runs the cluster for you, and servers you attach later join the same console.

04In their words

What Peon is

Taken from their own documentation and pricing.

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.

05Questions

Questions people ask

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. With no cluster at all, Anyport Cloud runs one for you on Pro, billed for what your apps use.

What does Anyport cost?

Three clusters are free with every feature and unlimited members, apps and projects. Pro is $5 a month with $5 of credit back each month; clusters past the free three are $2 a month each, and clusters on Anyport Cloud $5, billed by the hour. Compute on your own clusters is never metered because it is not ours, and the one counted resource there is traffic our gateway carries for clusters with no public address of their own: 10 GB a month free, 100 GB on Pro, then $0.02 per GB. A cluster on Anyport Cloud runs on our hardware instead and is billed for what your apps use, at $12 per vCPU and $6 per GiB of memory a month, from credit.

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.

Start with three free.

Connecting a cluster is one command and takes a few minutes. Three clusters are free with every feature, and the pricing page works out what yours would cost.

Pricing