The self-hosted Azure App Service alternative you own
AppCrane gives every app an always-on production and sandbox with a one-command promote, on a server you own, driven by your AI agent over MCP.
Azure App Service runs web apps and APIs on Azure, billed per VM instance in an App Service plan however many apps share it, with a free F1 tier Microsoft does not support for production. Deployment slots, staging copies you swap into production, need the Standard, Premium or Isolated tier.
| AppCrane | Azure App Service | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | A server you own — any Ubuntu box | Microsoft Azure |
| Where code & data live | On that server; AppCrane sends one anonymous daily install check-in (counts and version, no app data), off with APPCRANE_CHECKIN=off | In your Azure subscription, on Azure infrastructure |
| Pricing model | Free and open source on a server you already pay for — no per-seat, per-request or bandwidth metering | Per VM instance in the App Service plan, the same however many apps run on it; free F1 tier for trials and learning |
| Deploys | GitHub-native push-to-deploy, zero-downtime releases (start new, health check, swap, drain old), rollback to a kept release that restarts its image instead of rebuilding | Deployment slots on Standard, Premium or Isolated; swap back to roll back |
| Agent-native (MCP) | 74 tools on an MCP server on your own box — your AI agent deploys, sets env, reads logs, rolls back and promotes, and each call is audited against its user | Azure MCP Server: deploy and update web apps, change app settings, start, stop or restart, run diagnostics |
| Single sign-on | SAML 2.0, OIDC and SCIM in the AGPL-3.0 build, nothing to activate | See the provider’s identity documentation |
| Isolation & TLS | Per-app Docker containers, auto-HTTPS via Caddy | VM instances in an App Service plan |
| Openness | Open source (AGPL-3.0), standard Docker + Caddy — you run the control plane | Vendor-operated managed service |
| Audit | Per-user audit: who deployed what, which environment, when — stored on your server | Azure Monitor activity log: control-plane operations, kept 90 days at no charge |
Azure App Service is a good fit when you want someone else to own the servers. Choose AppCrane when the apps are agent-built, the agent should do the deploying, and your code, data and audit trail should stay on infrastructure you own. It’s open source — read every line.