Reviewed 2026-10-14 · 21 self-hostable tools
Software you can run on your own server
These are the tools that replace a subscription with a server you rent: analytics, automation, wikis, photo libraries, document archives, newsletters, dashboards and media servers. For each one we describe what it actually takes to run — the memory it wants, whether it is one container or four, what grows, and what you give up — and we link the project's own install documentation so you can read the source rather than our summary of it.
We do not print a figure for what self-hosting costs, because the number depends on the box you choose, the disk you need and the backup you keep. Instead every page ends at the providers' own pricing pages. What we will say plainly is what you are taking on.
- Tools
- 21
- Groups
- 9
- Straightforward
- 3
- Involved
- 5
Six costs that come with every tool below
Self-hosting moves work from a vendor's rota onto yours. None of it is optional, and it is the same for all 21 tools here, so it is stated once rather than repeated on every page.
- You own the updates. Security releases have to be applied by you, on your schedule, and a project that stops publishing releases becomes your problem to notice.
- You own the backups, and a backup is not a backup until you have restored from it once.
- You own the uptime. There is no status page to watch and no support line to call when it stops answering.
- You own the security patches, the TLS certificate, the reverse proxy and the firewall in front of it.
- You are the on-call rota. The failure mode nobody plans for is being the only person who knows how the thing was set up.
- The hardware has a running cost and a lifetime. Disks fail, and the replacement is on you.
Web & product analytics · 3
Analytics is the most common first self-host: the tracker is small, the data is sensitive, and the hosted plans are priced per event or per session.
Umami
StraightforwardInstead of Google Analytics
A privacy-focused web analytics application: traffic, referrers, events, goals and funnels on one dashboard, with a tracker that does not set cookies in its default configuration. It is one Node application beside one PostgreSQL database, which is why it is often the first thing people self-host.
What it needs and what it costs youPlausible Community Edition
ModerateInstead of Google Analytics
The self-hosted release of Plausible: a cookie-free analytics dashboard with a small tracking script. It is the same codebase as the company's hosted product, published as a free Community Edition that the hosted subscriptions fund.
What it needs and what it costs youMatomo On-Premise
ModerateInstead of Google Analytics
A full analytics platform rather than a small tracker: goals, funnels, custom reports, segmenting, a plugin marketplace and log analytics. It is a PHP application over MySQL, and the project publishes separate guides for installing it, securing it, speeding it up and keeping it updated. Matomo's own guide says the on-premise edition remains free to download, with paid support plans alongside it.
What it needs and what it costs you
Workflow automation · 2
Automation is billed per task or per run, so the bill tracks your success. Moving the runner onto your own box changes what a busy month costs.
n8n
ModerateInstead of Zapier
A visual workflow automation platform you can run yourself: a canvas of nodes, triggers, branching and code steps, with a broad catalogue of integrations and its own AI steps. The repository describes it as fair-code rather than open source, and the licence is the first thing to read before you plan around it.
What it needs and what it costs youActivepieces
ModerateInstead of Zapier
An open-source automation builder: triggers, actions, branching and AI or MCP steps, assembled from pieces. The core is published openly, with some directories held under a separate enterprise licence.
What it needs and what it costs you
Docs & knowledge bases · 4
A wiki or note store is small data and a lot of writing. Self-hosting keeps the content readable when a subscription lapses.
AFFiNE
InvolvedInstead of Notion
A workspace that mixes documents, a whiteboard and databases in one place, with real-time collaboration. It runs as a desktop app, in a browser, or on your own server, and the project's documentation has a full self-hosting section rather than a single page.
What it needs and what it costs youTrilium Notes
StraightforwardInstead of Notion, Obsidian
A hierarchical note-taking application built for large personal knowledge bases: notes nest arbitrarily deep, and a self-hosted server keeps a desktop client in sync. The project is now maintained as TriliumNext, which is what the original repository address resolves to today.
What it needs and what it costs youOutline
InvolvedInstead of Confluence, Notion
A collaborative knowledge base for teams: markdown documents in collections, search, sharing links and permissions. It is a React and Node application published as a container image, and its licence is the Business Source License rather than an open-source one.
What it needs and what it costs youDocmost
ModerateInstead of Confluence, Notion
A collaborative wiki and documentation tool — spaces, groups, permissions and page editing — published as containers. Its documentation separates the free install from the edition features that need a licence key.
What it needs and what it costs you
Files, photos & documents · 4
These are the entries where storage, not software, decides the outcome. Plan the disks and the backup before the install.
Immich
InvolvedInstead of Google Photos
A self-hosted photo and video library with mobile apps that back up in the background, albums, sharing, search and machine learning for faces and objects. It is the most demanding application in this dataset, and its own requirements page says so.
What it needs and what it costs youPaperless-ngx
ModerateInstead of A filing cabinet of scanned paper
A document management system: it takes scans, runs optical character recognition over them, then indexes the text so you can search inside every page. Documents are filed by tags, correspondents and document type rather than by folder.
What it needs and what it costs youNextcloud
InvolvedInstead of Dropbox, Google Drive
File sync and share with desktop and mobile clients, plus a large set of optional applications on top of it: calendar, contacts, talk, office documents and more. The project maintains an all-in-one container deployment that bundles the web server, database, caching and a backup path.
What it needs and what it costs youStirling PDF
StraightforwardInstead of Adobe Acrobat, online PDF converters
A PDF toolkit you host yourself: merge, split, sign, redact, compress, convert and run OCR, through a browser interface or its own API. It exists so that documents do not have to be uploaded to somebody else's converter.
What it needs and what it costs you
Email & publishing · 2
The software here is the easy half. Deliverability, DNS records and reputation are the parts that decide whether self-hosting this is a good idea.
listmonk
ModerateInstead of Mailchimp
A newsletter and mailing list manager shipped as a single binary: subscriber lists, templates, campaigns, a public subscription page and bounce handling, all backed by PostgreSQL.
What it needs and what it costs youGhost
ModerateInstead of Substack, beehiiv
A publishing platform with the whole loop in it: a site, member accounts, paid subscriptions and newsletters. The project publishes self-hosting instructions through its CLI, and a container route it labels as a preview.
What it needs and what it costs you
Databases & dashboards · 2
Spreadsheet-databases and BI tools that read from where your data already lives, rather than replacing it.
NocoDB
ModerateInstead of Airtable
A spreadsheet-database that puts a grid, gallery, kanban and form interface on top of an ordinary database, with APIs generated from the tables. It is positioned as a self-hostable alternative to hosted base tools, and its own quickstart runs a stack rather than a single container.
What it needs and what it costs youMetabase
ModerateInstead of Hosted BI tools
A business intelligence tool that connects to the database you already have and puts a question builder, SQL editor and dashboards on top of it. It runs as a single Java application or container, and it keeps its own application database for the questions and dashboards you save.
What it needs and what it costs you
Design & prototyping · 1
Design tools are heavy applications: editors, exporters and file storage. Expect a bigger box and more services than a wiki.
Developer & identity services · 2
Services a technical team can run for itself, where the data is source code or credentials and the case for control is strongest.
Gitea
ModerateInstead of GitHub, GitLab
A self-hosted Git service: repositories over HTTPS and SSH, issues, pull requests, code review, package registries and a web interface, all in a single Go binary. The project's installation documentation covers containers, packages and building from source.
What it needs and what it costs youVaultwarden
ModerateInstead of Bitwarden, 1Password
An independent server that implements the Bitwarden client API, written in Rust, so the official Bitwarden apps and browser extensions can sync to a host you run. The project's own README calls it an alternative implementation and points out that its support channels are not Bitwarden's.
What it needs and what it costs you
Media servers · 1
Software for your own film, television and music library. The server is cheap next to the disks that hold the library.
Where the server comes from
Every tool on this page runs on an ordinary virtual machine — a small server with root access. That is the purchase this section is really about. We do not print monthly figures, because the right size depends on the tool and on your data; the links below go to each provider's own pricing page so you can see the current numbers there.
Hostinger
Hostinger's VPS product is the closest fit to a self-hosted application: its own page advertises root access, Docker and NVMe storage, with data centres in several regions.
See Hostinger's plansRead Hostinger's published pricing ↗DigitalOcean
Virtual machines billed as you use them, with separate volumes, snapshots and object storage for the parts you want to keep outside the server.
See DigitalOcean's plansRead DigitalOcean's published pricing ↗Hetzner
Cloud instances and dedicated servers with rates published per instance size, so the cost of a bigger box is visible before you move.
See Hetzner's plansRead Hetzner's published pricing ↗What to check on any provider's page
- A virtual machine you have root on, not a website plan with a control panel bolted on top.
- Snapshots or automated backups, and where those backups are stored.
- Block storage or object storage for the data that will outgrow the server's own disk.
- What the monthly rate renews at, rather than the first-term rate on the signup page.
- Where the data centre is, if the data has a jurisdiction attached to it.
The “See plans” links go through our own /go/ redirect and some of them are affiliate links, which pay us if you sign up. That does not change what we write: the descriptions and trade-offs in this section come from the projects' own documentation, and the plain pricing link under each provider is not an affiliate link. See our disclosure.
Not ready to run a server?
That is a reasonable conclusion. 77 hosted tools are covered in the main index, with each vendor's own pricing page linked, and the head-to-head comparisons cover what actually differs between two products. Where a self-hosted tool has a hosted counterpart we track, its page links straight to our notes on it.
Spotted something out of date? Corrections go to [email protected].