Install on the machine you have
Download the desktop app for Mac, Linux, or Windows — or pip install watchtower-podman. That spare laptop or mini-PC in the drawer? That's your server now.
Open source · Runs on computers you already own
Turn the computers you already own into your personal cloud.
Got a laptop or mini-PC gathering dust? Give it a job. Point WatchTower at your GitHub repo and your website is live — database, backups, and a private URL included, for $0/month. And when a deploy breaks, WatchTower fixes it by itself.
Need a different platform or version?
$ pip install watchtower-podman
How it works
Live in three steps.
No YAML, no reverse-proxy homework, no cloud account. The desktop app sets up everything it needs — including Podman — with guided one-click installs.
Sign in with GitHub, pick a repo
Or start from the app catalog. WatchTower builds your project in a rootless container and wires up a database if you need one — connection string included.
Click Deploy — get a URL
Private over your Tailscale network by default; go public through a Cloudflare tunnel when you're ready. Push to GitHub and it redeploys.
Then it keeps it running
The only self-hosting platform that fixes its own failures.
Coolify, Dokploy, Umbrel, and CasaOS all let you self-host. None of them fix a broken deploy for you.
✗ deploy failed
→
diagnosed: port conflict
→
fix applied
→
live again
not a mockup — a real failed deploy explaining itself
Diagnoses the cause
Port conflicts, registry flakes, out-of-memory, bad env vars — failures are classified, not just logged.
Fixes and retries — with guardrails
With autonomy on, safe fixes are applied and the deploy retried. A thrash guardrail stops it from fixing recklessly.
Asks when it shouldn't guess
Anything it can't safely auto-fix waits in your approval queue with an AI root-cause analysis attached.
Batteries included
Everything a small stack needs.
One app, one machine, the whole picture — no plugin shopping trip before your first deploy.
Managed databases
Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, Mongo, Redis — one click, auto-wired connection strings, scheduled backups.
Private by default
Reach your machine from anywhere over Tailscale. No port-forwarding, no open ports, nothing public until you say so.
Off-host backups across your devices
Every database backup auto-copies to another machine on your network or a cloud folder — so your data survives a dead disk. Works across Mac, Linux & Windows.
App catalog & templates
Self-hostable apps and project templates, deployable in a click — plus your own repos.
Container manager
Rootless Podman containers and pods, start to logs, from the same UI. No root Docker daemon on your machine.
Team, roles & audit log
GitHub sign-in, org roles, and an append-only record of who deployed what, when — SOC 2-style evidence built in.
AI operator — bring your own model
Point it at Ollama, LM Studio, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. It can only do what you can do — no privilege escalation.
Why not the others?
A fair comparison.
WatchTower is younger than Coolify — it wins on self-healing and rootless-on-your-own-PC, not on breadth.
| WatchTower | Coolify | Dokploy | Umbrel / CasaOS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Deploy from GitHub | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | partial |
| One-click databases | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Self-heals a failed deploy | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Built for your own PC (not a VPS) | ✅ | VPS-first | VPS-first | ✅ |
| Rootless (no root Docker daemon) | ✅ Podman | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Private by default (Tailscale) | ✅ built-in | add-on | add-on | add-on |
Reflects public feature sets as of mid-2026.
Pricing
The core is free. Forever.
Open-core under Apache-2.0 + ELv2. You never pay to deploy your own apps on your own hardware.
Free · forever
$0
Everything you need to run your own stack.
- Unlimited deploys from GitHub
- Managed databases + scheduled backups
- Self-healing deploys
- Tailscale remote access & app catalog
Pro · for teams
Free in beta
Everything unlocked today — paid plans arrive with billing.
- Team roles & per-environment permissions
- SSO (SAML / OIDC)
- Multi-region failover
- Priority support
Give your spare computers a job.
Download or pip install watchtower-podman, sign in with GitHub, deploy. Free and open source.
Trying it? Tell us where it fights you — every report shapes the roadmap.