Built for side projects, not SLAs. Your demos, previews, and portfolio apps — actually running, on your own domain, on a VPS you already pay for.
→ l8bin.com for the full picture.
Self-hosted App Manager. Deploy single or multi-service apps from your dashboard, CLI, or GitHub Actions — with volume persistence, custom routing, and automatic HTTPS.
Cloud hosting platforms are great until you check the bill for side projects you built months ago. Self-hosted PaaS platforms are built for production workloads — customer-facing apps that need uptime guarantees, multi-tenant isolation, and rollback safety. Your weekend demo doesn't need that overhead.
LiteBin runs on one cheap VPS ($5-10/mo) and sleeps apps when nobody's looking. No per-app fees, no credit card on file, no vendor lock-in. Deploy from your laptop or GitHub Actions — your Docker image runs as-is, behind your own domain, with automatic HTTPS.
It's built for engineers who want their side projects, demos, and portfolio apps actually running — not just committed to a repo or sitting in a local Docker container.
| Choice | Why |
|---|---|
| Rust (orchestrator, agent, CLI) | Single binary, low memory, fast cold starts, reliable long-running services |
| Caddy (reverse proxy) | Dynamic config via admin API, automatic HTTPS, JSON config pushed programmatically |
| SQLite (WAL mode) | Zero ops, single-file, fast enough for this scale — no Postgres to manage |
| Docker (runtime) | Standard container format, works with any registry, familiar tooling |
| Docker Compose (multi-service) | Deploy multi-container apps from docker-compose.yml — per-project networks, dependency-ordered startup, selective service rebuilds |
| No Kubernetes | LiteBin manages 1-50 apps on 1-5 servers. K8s adds complexity with no benefit at this scale |
| Scale-to-zero for web apps | Idle web projects can sleep and wake on HTTP requests, saving resources without losing on-demand availability |
More rationale in Design Decisions.
LiteBin has two routing modes, switchable from the dashboard at any time:
Master Proxy (default) — All traffic flows through the master server. Simple setup: one wildcard DNS record. Trade-off: master sees 2x bandwidth (proxies both directions).
Cloudflare DNS — DNS points directly to agent nodes. Each agent handles its own traffic independently. Trade-off: requires a Cloudflare account. The key advantage: agents continue serving traffic even if the master is down.
See Architecture for the full breakdown, and Configuration → DNS Records for the records each mode needs.
# Interactive — asks what to install
curl -fsSL https://l8b.in | bash
# Master server (orchestrator + dashboard + Caddy)
curl -fsSL https://l8b.in | bash -s master
# Agent
curl -fsSL https://l8b.in | bash -s agent
# CLI only
curl -fsSL https://l8b.in | bash -s cliRun the master on a Linux VPS as root — the installer sets up Docker if it's missing. The guided walkthrough (prompts, DNS, admin account, first deploy) lives at l8bin.com/quickstart.
- CLI —
l8b shipbuilds on your machine and streams the image to the server. No registry needed; Dockerfile optional (Railpack auto-detects). (CLI reference) - Dashboard — click Deploy and enter any public-registry image, or upload a
docker-compose.ymlfor multi-service apps. - GitHub — the dashboard's GitHub App writes the workflow + secrets into your repo (github-connect), or wire l8bin-action by hand.
- AI agents — give Cursor or Claude the LiteBin MCP server and let them deploy, verify, and fix end-to-end: l8bin.com/agents.
Idle apps sleep to zero and wake on the first request; any project can be pinned always-on.
┌──────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ ┌────────────────┐
│ Dashboard │ │ Orchestrator │ │ Agent (opt.) │
│ (React) │ │ (Rust) │ │ (Rust) │
│ nginx:alpine│ │ API + Docker │ │ Docker mTLS │
└──────┬───────┘ └──────┬────────┘ └───────┬────────┘
│ │ │
└────────────────────┼──────────────────────┘
│
┌──────┴────────┐
│ Caddy │
│ Reverse Proxy│
│ Auto HTTPS │
└───────────────┘
- Orchestrator — API server, container lifecycle, route management, compose parsing, volume scoping, auth, heartbeat, janitor (Rust, axum)
- Dashboard — React UI for deploying apps, managing nodes, configuring settings, and managing services and volumes
- Caddy — reverse proxy with automatic TLS termination, dynamic routing via admin API, and custom route proxy support (path-based and subdomain alias)
- Agent — runs on remote servers, manages containers locally, handles wake requests autonomously via mTLS
See Architecture for the detailed component breakdown, routing modes, and links to all technical docs.
Mix any servers, any providers — each agent hosts its own set of apps:
# On the master — generates mTLS certs, prints a cert bundle
curl -fsSL https://l8b.in | bash -s certs
# On each agent — prompts for the cert bundle
curl -fsSL https://l8b.in | bash -s agentOr start from the dashboard — Nodes → Add Node — which walks you through it. Details in Multi-Server Setup.
| Topic | Link |
|---|---|
| Architecture | docs/architecture/architecture.md |
| Design decisions | docs/architecture/decisions.md |
| Multi-server (agents, mTLS) | docs/topics/multi-server.md |
| Volumes & persistence | docs/topics/volumes.md |
| Configuration & DNS records | docs/topics/configuration.md · .env.example |
| GitHub connect | docs/topics/github-connect.md |
| Security · Backup | docs/topics/security.md · docs/topics/backup.md |
| FAQ / troubleshooting | docs/topics/faq.md |
| CLI reference · REST API | docs/reference/cli.md · API docs · openapi.json |
| llms.txt (for agents) | l8bin.com/llms.txt · l8bin.com/llms-full.txt (with API spec) |
Requires Rust, Docker, and optionally Node.js + pnpm (for the dashboard).
# Build all
cargo build --release
# Check compilation (fast, no binary)
cargo check
# Start full stack
docker compose --profile master up -d --buildOn Windows with Docker Desktop, the installer script runs the full stack locally:
iex (irm https://l8b.in/windows.ps1) # add -Clean to tear it downCaddy generates a self-signed cert for *.localhost — expect a browser warning.
See the Development Guide for build scripts, local testing, Windows development, and cross-compilation.