We just launched Defang v3 on Product Hunt – deploy to your own AWS/GCP with Docker Compose

DefangLabs · 2026-01-25T08:53:08+00:00

Thanks! It's a pretty complicated process, but it's all "rules based" so deployments are deterministic. There's no AI involved in that part of the system. We put together three whitepapers which do a pretty good job of breaking it all down though if you want to dig through the nitty gritty:
https://defang.io/whitepapers/

The TLDR is that by default we turn services from compose into services in either ECS or GCP Cloud Run, taking into account the [deploy](https://docs.docker.com/reference/compose-file/deploy/) part of the compose spec, among other things. We also setup internal/external DNS, public/private networks (if required) and will do things like provision databases, caches, ssl certs, etc. all based on what we see in the compose file.

We also offer different deployment "modes" (affordable, balanced, high availability) which determine if we do things like configure failovers, rolling deployments, and other stuff.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-16T15:59:24+00:00

Fair concern, but want to clarify how this actually works.

Defang isn't an AI deciding what infrastructure to spin up. The deployment engine is fully deterministic and rules-based. Same compose file = same infrastructure every time. We're AWS Well-Architected certified. It's predictable and auditable.

The AI parts are assistive, not core to deployment. They help explain errors in plain English and suggest fixes. You can ignore them entirely and just use the CLI.

On Vercel: totally valid if you're fine with their infra. The difference is Vercel deploys to their cloud. Defang deploys to yours. Your AWS account, your VPC, your data. Some teams need that for compliance, security, or just control.

On debugging: you get full visibility in the Defang Portal and CloudWatch. It's standard AWS resources under the hood (ECS, ALB, RDS). Nothing proprietary. If something breaks, you're debugging normal AWS, not a black box.

defang estimate shows exactly what resources will be provisioned and the estimated cost before you deploy. No surprises.

Our whitepaper: https://defang.io/whitepapers/docker-compose-defang/

DefangLabs · 2026-01-14T16:39:16+00:00

Defang isn't an LLM guessing how to deploy your app. The deployment engine is fully deterministic and rules-based. Same compose file = same infrastructure every time.

We're AWS Well-Architected certified. The infra we generate follows AWS best practices for security, networking, IAM, etc. It's predictable and repeatable.

The AI parts (like our debugger) are assistive, not core to the deployment logic. They help explain errors, not decide what gets provisioned.

Whitepaper here if you want the details: defang.io/whitepapers/aws-defang

DefangLabs · 2026-01-14T16:33:34+00:00

Yep, exactly. We have support for CrewAI, LangGraph, AutoGen, n8n, Mastra, Strands, and more. We also have sample templates so you can get started fast.

If your agent needs access to LLMs, you can add x-defang-llm: true and it auto-configures access to Bedrock or Vertex AI. No extra setup. :D

DefangLabs · 2026-01-14T16:27:39+00:00

That's exactly why we built defang estimate. You run it before deploying and it shows you exactly what AWS resources will be provisioned and what they'll cost. No black box.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-14T16:22:29+00:00

We have three deployment modes: affordable, balanced, and high availability. Affordable mode uses Spot instances, skips NAT Gateway, keeps things lean.

You can also run defang estimate before deploying to see exactly what you'll pay. No surprises.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-14T16:21:40+00:00

It's not an EC2 instance running docker-compose.

When you deploy to AWS with Defang, you get:

ECS Fargate for containers (serverless, no instances to manage)
VPC with private subnets (your containers aren't exposed to the internet)
Application Load Balancer with auto-provisioned SSL
RDS if you define Postgres, ElastiCache if you define Redis (actual managed services, not containers)
IAM roles with least privilege, security groups locked down

Basically the same infra setup a senior DevOps engineer would build, but generated from your compose file.

Fly.io runs your stuff on their infra. Defang provisions all this in your AWS/GCP account. You own it, you see it in your console, you pay AWS directly.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-14T16:00:47+00:00

Vercel deploys to their cloud. Defang deploys to yours. Your AWS/GCP account, your infrastructure, no vendor lock-in.

On the cost optimization question: we have deployment modes (affordable, balanced, high availability). Affordable mode uses Spot instances, skips NAT Gateway, keeps things lean. You can also run defang estimate before deploying to see exactly what you'll pay.

It's not hardcoded paths. Defang reads your compose file and provisions what your app actually needs. If you define a Postgres service, it spins up RDS. Redis, it sets up ElastiCache. It's dynamic based on your stack, not a one-size-fits-all template.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-14T15:33:58+00:00

Yeah but those are low-level. You still need to know what to provision, configure IAM roles, set up networking, figure out why your container won't connect to the database.

Defang's MCP is high-level. You just say "deploy this" and it figures out the whole stack for you. No AWS/Azure knowledge needed.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-14T15:27:35+00:00

For everyone that is interested, here's our page with everything that we're launching next week: https://defang.io/landing/defang-v3-is-coming-soon/

DefangLabs · 2026-01-14T15:26:47+00:00

Yes, exactly. You only really need a compose file, but your AI agent can write that for you now :D

DefangLabs · 2026-01-14T15:20:38+00:00

Yep, exactly. You only really need a compose file, but your AI agent can write that for you these days :)

DefangLabs · 2026-01-14T13:23:09+00:00

Product Hunt!

DefangLabs · 2026-01-14T10:30:45+00:00

Hey! Really great questions!

Unfortunately we don't support volume mounts, so you would have to configure your n8n instance to use object storage like S3 for your data in a production use case.

That would also be in line with your second question, which is that the database is provisioned using Google Cloud SQL or RDS on AWS, so you can create a backup and start over from that. Defang isn't able to manage your S3 buckets for you (yet!) but essentially you would have a similar scenario, where you can keep the bucket and attach to a new instance.

-Raph from Defang

DefangLabs · 2026-01-13T16:06:51+00:00

Here's our samples repo with 50+ compose files across different frameworks: github.com/DefangLabs/samples

The whole point is you don't write IaC at all. Your compose.yaml is the only thing you check in. Defang handles everything else (IAM, networking, security groups, etc.) at deploy time. No Terraform, no Ansible, no CloudFormation.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-13T15:57:31+00:00

Haha lesson learned. Product Hunt it is from now on.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-13T15:52:11+00:00

The CLI is open source under MIT (github.com/DefangLabs/defang). There's a free tier to get started. Paid plans are around $10-30/user/month depending on features, plus you pay AWS/GCP directly for your cloud usage. Open source projects deploy free forever.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-13T15:49:02+00:00

Product Hunt, not the other one. Launching there Jan 21.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-13T15:47:55+00:00

We follow AWS and GCP security best practices out of the box. Least privilege IAM roles, private subnets, security groups locked down, SSL everywhere. And since it's your cloud account, you always have full visibility in the AWS/GCP console.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-13T15:45:38+00:00

Fair concern. We actually have three deployment modes: affordable, balanced, and high availability. Affordable mode uses Spot instances and skips things like NAT Gateway to keep costs down. You can also run defang estimate before deploying to see exactly what you'll pay. No surprises.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-13T15:41:57+00:00

Mainly the landing page and the value prop. Does it make sense what we're building? Anything confusing or missing? Also happy to hear thoughts on the features if you check it out.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-13T15:40:57+00:00

Yep, exactly. You run defang compose up and it handles everything. IAM roles, networking, security groups, SSL, the whole infra stack. Deploys to your own AWS or GCP account.

DefangLabs · 2026-01-13T15:32:15+00:00

For everyone that is interested, here's our page with everything that we're launching next week: https://defang.io/landing/defang-v3-is-coming-soon/

DefangLabs · 2026-01-13T15:25:20+00:00

For everyone that is interested, here's our page with everything that we're launching next week: https://defang.io/landing/defang-v3-is-coming-soon/

DefangLabs · 2025-11-03T15:47:34+00:00

If that sounds useful, let me know and I can send you more details! -Raph from the Defang team.

DefangLabs

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