Sablier

Free and open-source software that starts workloads on demand and stops them after a period of inactivity.

It integrates with reverse proxy plugins (Traefik, Caddy, Nginx, Envoy, etc.) to intercept incoming requests, wake up sleeping workloads, and display a waiting page until they're ready.

Whether you're running on a resource-constrained device like a Raspberry Pi, managing a QA environment used only once a week, or reducing cloud costs by scaling idle workloads to zero — Sablier is built for you.

Key features:

• On-demand start/stop for Docker, Kubernetes, Podman, Proxmox LXC, systemd, Nomad and AWS ECS workloads
• Customizable waiting UI with themes while workloads warm up
• Webhook notifications when instances start or stop
• Prometheus metrics for monitoring session and workload activity
• OpenTelemetry tracing for end-to-end request observability
• Stop or pause strategies to maximize resource reclamation on constrained hardware
• Scale mode: throttle CPU and memory when idle instead of stopping, for zero-cold-start workloads
• Anti-affinity: make a workload back off automatically while another group is active, to avoid GPU/RAM contention

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• Installation
  • Use the Docker image
  • Use the binary distribution
  • Compile your binary from the sources
  • Use the Helm Chart
• Quick Start
• Configuration
  • Configuration File
  • Environment Variables
  • Arguments
• Providers
  • Docker
  • Docker Swarm
  • Podman
  • Kubernetes
  • Proxmox LXC
  • Systemd
  • Nomad
  • AWS ECS
• Scale Mode

Installation

You can install Sablier using one of the following methods:

• Use the Docker image
• Use the binary distribution
• Compile your binary from the sources
• Use the Helm Chart

Use the Docker image

• Docker Hub: sablierapp/sablier
• GitHub Container Registry: ghcr.io/sablierapp/sablier

With Docker Compose — copy this into a compose.yaml and run docker compose up -d:

services:
  sablier:
    image: sablierapp/sablier:1.21.0 # x-release-please-version
    command:
      - start
      - --provider.name=docker
    ports:
      - "10000:10000"
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock

With docker run — using a sample configuration file (sablier.yaml):

docker run -p 10000:10000 -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock sablierapp/sablier:1.21.0

[!TIP] Verify the image signature to ensure authenticity:

gh attestation verify --owner sablierapp oci://sablierapp/sablier:1.21.0

Use the binary distribution

Grab the latest binary from the releases page and run it:

./sablier --help

[!TIP] Verify the binary signature to ensure authenticity:

gh attestation verify sablier-1.10.3-linux-amd64.tar.gz -R sablierapp/sablier

Compile your binary from the sources

git clone [email protected]:sablierapp/sablier.git
cd sablier
make
# Output will change depending on your distro
./sablier_draft_linux-amd64

Use the Helm Chart

Deploy Sablier to your Kubernetes cluster using the official Helm chart for production-ready deployments.

Add the Sablier Helm repository:

helm repo add sablierapp https://sablierapp.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update

Install Sablier:

helm install sablier sablierapp/sablier

📚 Full Documentation | 💻 Chart Repository

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Quick Start

[!NOTE] This quick start demonstrates Sablier with the Docker provider.

For other providers, see the Providers section.

1. Start your container to scale to zero

Run your container with Sablier labels:

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗