The self-hosted Google Cloud Run alternative you own
AppCrane runs your containers on a server you own, with an always-on production and sandbox per app, rollback that restarts the previous release's kept image, and a per-user audit trail stored on that server.
Google Cloud Run runs containers on Google's infrastructure inside your Google Cloud project, billed either while instances handle requests (request-based) or for each instance's whole lifetime (instance-based). Google runs a remote Cloud Run MCP server that can deploy a service from a container image, a source archive or file contents.
| AppCrane | Google Cloud Run | |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | A server you own — any Ubuntu box | Google's infrastructure, in your Google Cloud project |
| 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 Google Cloud project, on Google's infrastructure |
| Pricing model | Free and open source on a server you already pay for — no per-seat, per-request or bandwidth metering | Request-based (charged while handling requests, starting and shutting down) or instance-based (charged for the instance's whole lifetime) |
| 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 | Managed build and deploy pipeline |
| 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 | Google-run remote MCP server: deploy from an image, an archive or file contents; get and list services |
| Single sign-on | SAML 2.0, OIDC and SCIM in the AGPL-3.0 build, nothing to activate | Workforce Identity Federation with any OIDC or SAML 2.0 identity provider |
| Isolation & TLS | Per-app Docker containers, auto-HTTPS via Caddy | Containers on Google-managed infrastructure |
| 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 | Cloud Audit Logs: Admin Activity entries for administrative write calls |
Google Cloud Run 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.