Self-hosting, costed honestly
Every guide will tell you a tool is lightweight. We tell you it idles at 150 MB, needs a Postgres dump rather than a file copy, and breaks if you skip a major version. 105 tools profiled the same way, so you can compare them on the things that decide whether you still run them in a year.
Where to start
Three entry points, depending on how far in you already are.
You have never run a server
The shortest honest path from nothing to one running service you actually rely on, with the three decisions that are hard to undo.
Start hereYou are choosing between tools
Filter 105 profiles by operational load, memory, licence and identity support, then read the head to head that matches your shortlist.
DirectoryYou already run things and want to sleep
Backups you have actually tested, monitoring that fits on the same box, and an update routine that does not lose data.
OperationsEvery number above is computed from our own structured index of 105 tools, which you can download as JSON. The scoring rubric and the derivation rules are on the methodology page.
Platforms
Hypervisors, container runtimes, NAS operating systems and the deploy tooling that sits on top of them.
8 toolsNetworking
Reverse proxies, certificate automation, DNS filtering and getting to your server from outside the house.
7 toolsBackup
Snapshot engines, repository formats and the S3-compatible storage your other services expect.
6 toolsIdentity
Password managers, OIDC providers, forward-auth gateways and the directory underneath them.
11 toolsMedia
Video, music, audiobooks, comics and the automation stack that keeps a library tidy.
6 toolsPhotos and files
Phone photo backup, file sync, and the groupware suites that try to replace an entire cloud drive.
7 toolsDocuments
Paperless archives, wikis, note stores and collaborative editors you will still be able to read in ten years.
8 toolsMonitoring
Uptime checks, metrics, logs and disk health, sized so the monitoring costs less than the thing it watches.
5 toolsHome automation
The hub, the radios, the firmware toolchain and the camera NVR that make a house respond to itself.
6 toolsCommunication
Federated chat, team messaging, the hardest thing in self-hosting (mail), and simple push alerts.
6 toolsDeveloper
Self-hosted git, CI runners, container registries and remote editors.
5 toolsSecurity
Intrusion prevention, log-driven banning, vulnerability monitoring and how to handle updates without losing data.
5 toolsFeeds
RSS readers, archival bookmarking and the read-later queue that outlives the services that used to hold it.
4 toolsDashboards
Start pages, service dashboards and the workflow engines that wire everything else together.
6 toolsProductivity
Task boards, meal planning, inventory and double-entry budgeting, plus honest notes on which ones people abandon.
4 toolsLocal AI
Model runners, chat front ends and metasearch, with the hardware reality behind each one.
Head to head
The choices people actually agonize over, decided with numbers and a clear recommendation.
All comparisons- Backups that actually restoreData
- Remote access without port forwardingNetworking
- Reverse proxy and TLS, done properlyNetworking
- Your first self-hosted server: the decisions that are hard to undoGetting started
- Single sign-on for self-hosters: the honest state of itIdentity
- When not to self-hostGetting started
Leave a cloud service
What each migration actually costs you, what you give up, and how to get your data out first.
All migrationsBackup planner: the right export for every service
Groups your stack by the export each service needs, then writes the nightly job in the order a restore actually requires.
Runs in your browserPort conflict checker for self-hosted services
Nineteen catalogued tools default to 8080. This maps your whole stack, flags the clashes and suggests where to move one.
Runs in your browserHome server resilience scorecard
Sixteen questions, weights that add to exactly 100, and your gaps ranked by what they cost rather than by how easy they are.
Runs in your browserReverse proxy config generator
Emits config for four proxies with the websocket and body-size settings each service actually needs, plus the DNS records to create.
Runs in your browserStack planner: how much server do these services need
Sums memory in ordinary use, not at idle, then adds the host OS and headroom and rounds up to a size you can buy.
Runs in your browserHow this site works
Independent, dated, sourced, and specific about its own limits.
What we do
- Describe every tool with the same fields, so comparisons are real rather than rhetorical.
- Check licences, versions and requirements against the project's own documentation, and link the source.
- Score operational load against a published rubric, and say when a number is our estimate.
- Recommend one option and explain what it costs you, instead of listing ten and shrugging.
- Log corrections in public and date every page.
What we do not do
- Take payment for inclusion, placement or a favourable verdict.
- Let a project review its own entry before publication.
- Publish a benchmark we did not run, or a figure we cannot source.
- Rewrite a project's marketing page and call it a review.
- Pretend a hard thing is easy because it makes for a shorter article.
Read the full editorial standards or see how the scores are built.