Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Way of Life

Habitica is an open-source habit-building program that treats your life like a role-playing game. Level up as you succeed, lose HP for failures, and earn Gold to buy weapons and armor. The project emphasizes community-driven guides and help resources to support contributors.

Key Features

• Gamified task management with Habits, Dailies and To-Dos, plus XP, Gold and gear. (apps.apple.com)
• Avatar customization with gear, pets and cosmetics. (apps.apple.com)
• Social features including Parties, Challenges and Guilds for collaboration and accountability. (apps.apple.com)
• Cross‑platform syncing and a strong open-source community contributing to the project. (apps.apple.com) (github.com)
• Subscriptions unlock Gems and exclusive items for extra content. (apps.apple.com)
• Tech stack demonstrated in the repository includes Node.js, Vue.js, Express and MongoDB. (github.com)

Use Cases

• Personal productivity and habit formation by turning tasks into RPG progress. (en.wikipedia.org)
• Team collaboration and accountability through Parties and Guilds for shared goals. (apps.apple.com)
• Learning or onboarding support via gamified task workflows and social features. (en.wikipedia.org)

Conclusion Habitica blends task management with RPG mechanics and a vibrant open-source community; it is widely used for personal productivity and collaborative goal-tracking. (github.com)

Ryot (Roll Your Own Tracker) is a self-hosted platform for tracking multiple parts of your life in one place, including media consumption and fitness progress. It focuses on a fast, modern UI with analytics and integrations so you can keep control of your personal data.

Key Features

• Track multiple domains such as books, movies/TV, games, workouts, and habits
• Imports from popular services (e.g., Goodreads, Trakt, Strong App)
• Integrations with media servers and players (e.g., Jellyfin, Plex, Emby, Kodi, Audiobookshelf)
• OpenID Connect authentication support
• Notifications to third-party services (e.g., Discord, ntfy, Apprise)
• PWA support for an app-like mobile experience
• GraphQL API for programmatic access and integrations
• Analytics and summaries with charts to understand trends and progress

Use Cases

• Maintain a private personal catalog of watched/read/played media with reviews and history
• Track workouts and fitness routines alongside other personal metrics
• Replace spreadsheets with a unified dashboard and automated imports/integrations

Ryot is a good fit for homelab and privacy-conscious users who want a single system to record and analyze personal activity across media and health domains, with extensibility via integrations and its API.

Beaver Habit Tracker is a lightweight, self-hosted web app for tracking habits through simple daily completion rather than goal-setting. It focuses on a fast, minimal workflow for marking habits done and reviewing streaks over time.

Key Features

• Simple habit tracking model without goal definitions
• Streak-focused history view for daily check-ins
• Flexible storage options, including SQLite database or local JSON on disk
• Optional authentication bypass for trusted local setups
• Runs well in containers and supports common self-hosting setups
• Community integrations and derivatives (for example, home automation triggers and external control surfaces)

Use Cases

• Personal habit tracking with a minimalist “mark as done” workflow
• Household or small-team habit checklists on a shared self-hosted instance
• Integrating habit completion into automations (for example, triggering a completion from another system)

Limitations and Considerations

• Intentionally avoids goal-based planning features; users needing targets, schedules, or advanced analytics may find it too minimal

Beaver Habit Tracker is a solid choice if you want a small, easy-to-run habit tracker that prioritizes speed and simplicity. Its storage flexibility and container-friendly deployment make it well-suited for homelabs and lightweight personal setups.

HabitTrove is a gamified habit tracking application designed to help users build and sustain positive routines. Users create daily habits, earn coins for completing them, and redeem coins for rewards via a built-in wishlist. The project is web-based with a Progressive Web App footprint and multi-language support.

Key Features

• Create and track daily habits
• Earn coins for completing habits
• Create a wishlist of rewards to redeem with earned coins
• View habit completion streaks and statistics
• Freehand drawings on habits and wishlist items for visual reminders
• Calendar heatmap to visualize progress (work in progress)
• Multi-language support
• Dark mode
• Progressive Web App (PWA) support
• Automatic daily backups with rotation

Use Cases

• Personal habit formation and motivation through coin-based rewards
• Visual reminders and customization via freehand drawings
• Offline-capable access and data safety with PWA and daily backups

Limitations and Considerations

• The public demo data is reset daily and does not store personal information
• The calendar heatmap feature is currently a work in progress; behavior may vary
• Hosted demos and self-hosted deployments require proper data management and security practices

Conclusion: HabitTrove provides a gamified approach to habit building with rewards, visual progress, and offline-capable access through a PWA. It is open-source and self-hosted, with an accessible public demo to explore features before deployment.

Perfice is an open-source, local-first self-tracking platform that lets you track arbitrary metrics (sleep, mood, habits, etc.), set goals, and surface correlations between metrics. The client is a web app (Svelte + TypeScript) with an optional backend for account sync and integrations.

Key Features

• Trackables: define and record any metric or event with flexible value types
• Automatic correlations: compute and surface relationships between metrics to reveal patterns
• Goals: create and monitor goals across multiple trackables
• Local-first storage: primary data storage and calculations use browser storage (IndexedDB) for privacy and offline-first use
• Exportability: export and import data in CSV and JSON formats
• Mobile support: packaged for Android via a native WebView wrapper (Capacitor) for on-device use
• Optional backend & sync: user accounts, multi-device synchronization and integrations are supported via an optional server
• Customizable UI and workflows, built with modern web stack for easy theming and extension

Use Cases

• Personal habit and behavior tracking to discover what affects mood, sleep, or productivity
• Wellness monitoring and correlation analysis for sleep, exercise, and mood patterns
• Quantifying progress toward goals and visualizing metric trends over time

Limitations and Considerations

• Multi-device sync and account features require deploying and configuring the optional backend; the backend is not required for single-device local use
• As a local-first app using browser storage, very large datasets may be constrained by the client environment and browser IndexedDB limits
• Mobile distribution relies on building the native wrapper; additional steps and tooling are needed to produce store-ready mobile packages

Perfice is suited for users who want a privacy-conscious, extensible self-tracking tool with built-in insights and goal support. It balances a local-first experience with optional server-backed sync for multi-device workflows.

HabitSync is a self-hostable habit-tracking platform that combines individual goal tracking with social features like shared habits, challenges, and leaderboards. It provides a PWA front end, a Java/Spring Boot backend API, and an Android mobile client.

Key Features

• Clean, mobile-first Progressive Web App (PWA) UI and installable Android app
• Flexible habit and goal configuration (daily/weekly/monthly/custom, negative habits, weekday selection)
• Social features: shared habits, monthly community challenges, leaderboards, and achievements
• Authentication via OIDC/OAuth2 (multiple issuers supported) and basic auth as alternative
• Notification system with Apprise integration for many delivery channels and custom schedules/triggers
• API-first architecture with Swagger docs and token/basic-auth access; import support for Loop Habit Tracker
• Easy Docker and Docker Compose deployment; supports H2 (file) and PostgreSQL databases

Use Cases

• Personal habit tracking with cross-device sync using the PWA or Android app
• Small social groups or friends running shared challenges and comparing progress
• Home automation integrations and external tooling via the REST API (for dashboards, notifications, or HA integration)

Limitations and Considerations

• The built-in API is marked as incomplete and may change; rely on it cautiously for long-term integrations
• Mobile app is under active development and may require matching server/client versions
• H2 is the default DB (file-based); production setups should prefer PostgreSQL for reliability and backups
• Notifications require an external Apprise API or compatible service for delivery

HabitSync is suitable for users who want a privacy-respecting, self-hosted habit tracker with social features and flexible authentication. It is production-ready with containerized deployment and an emphasis on API integration.