---
title: Self-hosting
description: How Futrou works, and how Futrou Nasua lets you run it on your own servers.
---

## How Futrou works

Futrou is a cloud platform for running full-stack applications: backends, frontends, and everything in between. You describe what you want to run, and Futrou runs it, scales it, and keeps it healthy. You pay by the hour for what you actually use.

Under the hood it is three separate pieces that fit together:

- **[Futrou Cloud](/docs/cloud/)** is the managed control plane: the dashboard, workspaces, billing, and team access you use every day.
- **[Futrou Nasua](#futrou-nasua)** is the orchestrator that does the real work on a server: it starts containers, routes traffic, answers DNS, and issues certificates.
- **[Futrou CLI](/docs/cli/)** is the terminal tool that manages either of them with the same commands.

When you create a [serverlet](/docs/serverlets/) in the dashboard, Futrou Cloud stores its configuration and hands it to a Futrou Nasua instance in the [region](/docs/regions/) you picked. Nasua pulls your container image and starts it, then routes traffic to it through [proxies](/docs/proxy/), serves your [DNS](/docs/dns/) records, and attaches any [storage](/docs/storage/) it needs. **Futrou Cloud is the brain, Futrou Nasua is the muscle.**

See [Architecture](/docs/workspaces/architecture/) to follow a request all the way through.

## Where it can run

Because every region is just a Futrou Nasua instance, the same platform runs in three ways:

- **Public cloud**: Futrou Cloud runs the servers and infrastructure for you. Sign up and deploy, with no hardware to manage.
- **Hybrid cloud**: bring your own servers into your workspace as a private region and combine them with Futrou's public regions however you like. You still deploy through Futrou Cloud exactly as before, and you keep its dashboard, billing, and team access.
- **Private cloud**: run Futrou Nasua standalone on your own domain, fully disconnected from Futrou Cloud. Every deployment and request goes straight to your own hardware.

Self-hosting means the last two: running Futrou Nasua on servers you control.

## Futrou Nasua

### What is it?

Futrou Nasua is the orchestrator that runs your infrastructure. [Futrou Cloud](/docs/cloud/) runs it behind the scenes in every public region, and you can run the very same software yourself.

It is a complete piece of software on its own. Install it on one server and you have a self-contained cloud platform for that server, or join several servers and run a whole cluster. It does not need Futrou Cloud to work.

### What it does

Futrou Nasua handles the building blocks of application infrastructure:

- **Compute**: starts, stops, and restarts containers, and scales them with load.
- **Networking**: routes proxy traffic over HTTP, TCP, and UDP, answers DNS queries, and issues and renews TLS certificates.
- **Storage**: keeps persistent volumes attached to your containers.
- **Projects**: holds all of the above together in one structure.

It also exposes a REST API with the same core schema as Futrou Cloud's, which is how the dashboard, the Futrou CLI, and Futrou MCP all talk to it.

### Standalone or connected

- **Standalone**: manage Futrou Nasua directly through its own dashboard, API, and [Futrou CLI](/docs/cli/). No Futrou Cloud account needed.
- **Connected to Futrou Cloud**: join a Futrou Nasua server to a workspace as a private region. You manage it from the same dashboard as Futrou's public regions, with the same billing, roles, and [Futrou MCP](/docs/mcp/) support.

It's the same software either way. Connecting only changes who manages it and how, not what it does.

### Install Futrou Nasua

On Linux, one command installs the latest version:

```bash
curl -fsSL https://futrou.com/nasua/install.sh | bash
```

See [Downloads](/docs/downloads/#futrou-nasua) for binary releases and other install options, and the [Nasua license](/docs/licenses/nasua/) for its terms.

### API and Futrou CLI

[Futrou CLI](/docs/cli/) uses the same commands for Futrou Nasua and Futrou Cloud, so your workflow stays the same whether you point it at a standalone server or at Futrou Cloud. Scripts written for one work on the other.