Kamal

A deployment tool from Basecamp that ships containerized web apps to bare metal or cloud servers over SSH with zero downtime.

14.7k stars, 769 forks Ruby On GitHub since January 2023

Visit website View on GitHub How to run it

What is Kamal?

Kamal deploys web apps anywhere, from bare metal to cloud VMs, without a platform in between. It builds a container image, pushes it to a registry, and uses SSH to run it on your servers, while kamal-proxy switches traffic between the old and new containers so users see no downtime. It works across many servers at once and manages accessories such as databases and caches. It was built at Basecamp, the company behind 37signals' products, originally for Rails, but works with any app that runs in a container.

Good fit if

  • You want to leave a cloud PaaS and deploy to your own servers with one command.
  • You manage several servers and want deployments defined in a single config file.

Look elsewhere if

  • You want a web dashboard and one-click databases: Coolify or Dokploy.
  • You want git push to a single server: Dokku.

Before you adopt it

Kamal is MIT-licensed and free, maintained by Basecamp, which uses it in production for its own products. It expects Docker on target servers and a container registry.

Drafted with AI from the project's README and repository data, then checked against that data on 30 October 2026. Report a correction

Kamal health: is it still maintained?

52 of 100, actively developed

  • Activity
    33 commits in the last 90 days, the latest on 21 October 2026.
    19 / 30
  • Contributors
    7 people wrote the 33 commits of the last 90 days; the most active wrote 75% of them.
    12 / 20
  • Releases
    5 releases in the last 12 months; the latest, v2.12.0, on 18 June 2026.
    13 / 20
  • Replies to issues
    Maintainers answered 20% of recent issues, with a median first reply after 44 days.
    3 / 20
  • Security practices
    No OpenSSF Scorecard for this repository yet, so this part gets a neutral score.
    5 / 10

Read from GitHub on 1 November 2026. How the score works

Kamal license: is it open source?

Kamal uses MIT, an open-source license approved by the OSI.

  1. January 2023First published on GitHub.
  2. TodayMIT.

How to run Kamal yourself

Docker
Dockerfile or compose file in the repository
Compose file
None in the repository
Setup effort
Not rated: no compose file to judge from
Kubernetes
No Helm chart in the repository
Desktop and mobile
No app builds in GitHub releases
Interface languages
English only

Install instructions: kamal-deploy.org or the README on GitHub.

Alternatives to Kamal

  • CoolifyAn open-source, self-hostable PaaS alternative to Vercel, Heroku & Netlify that lets you easily deploy… 78 health · Apache-2.0 · 65.5k stars
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All 25 projects in Self-hosting & PaaS

Questions about Kamal

Is Kamal open source?

Yes. Kamal is published under MIT, an OSI-approved open-source license.

Is Kamal still maintained?

Its health score is 52 of 100 (actively developed). It had 33 commits in the last 90 days, the latest on 21 October 2026, and its latest release came out on 18 June 2026.

How do I run Kamal?

You can run it with Docker. The README on GitHub has the exact steps.

What are the alternatives to Kamal?

Close alternatives in the Self-hosting & PaaS category include Coolify, Runtipi, Umbrel.