Best Self-hosted Media & Smart Home tools in 2026

Open-source radio broadcast and automation platform with scheduling, library management, live broadcasting and playout integration (Icecast, Liquidsoap).

AGPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Airtime Pro+6

Self-hosted ROM and game library manager that identifies titles from multiple sources, enriches metadata, and lets you play supported systems in the browser.

AGPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

PlayOn Cloud+4

Posterizarr automates creation of textless posters and overlays for Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby, pulling artwork from common metadata sources with a web UI and automation hooks.

GPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Plex+2

Self-hosted video compressor web app with a SvelteKit UI, FastAPI API, and Celery workers using FFmpeg with GPU acceleration (NVENC/VAAPI) and CPU fallback.

Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Any Video Converter (AVC) Online+5

Open-source karaoke party system where guests queue songs from their phone while a browser-based player runs the room, supporting MP3+G and MP4.

ISCSlowing down

Alternative to:

KaraFun+2

RapidBay is a self-hosted torrent video streaming service that searches via Jackett, streams selected files in-browser, downloads subtitles, and supports Chromecast, Apple TV, and Kodi.

MITActively maintained

Alternative to:

Webtor.io+4

WeddingShare is a self-hosted web app for creating shareable wedding photo galleries where guests can view and upload pictures, including QR-code sharing and admin review.

GPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Tinybeans+12

Castopod is an open-source podcast hosting platform to publish podcasts via RSS, interact with audiences (Fediverse), and track privacy-friendly analytics.

AGPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Buzzsprout+10

A Rust-based reverse proxy that aggregates multiple Jellyfin servers into a single unified interface with unified libraries, direct playback, and user mapping.

GPL-2.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Plex+2

Self-hosted audiobook manager that searches, downloads, tracks, and organizes audiobooks from torrents and Usenet with rich metadata and a responsive web UI.

Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Plex+3

Audioserve is a minimalist Rust server for streaming audiobooks and other audio files from folders, with a web PWA client, playlists, search, and optional transcoding.

Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Plex+8

Self-hosted IPTV M3U/Xtream playlist editor with XMLTV EPG management, channel/series tools, Xtream API output, and automations like scripts, webhooks, and email.

Actively maintained

Alternative to:

IPTV Editor+1

Free, cross-platform open-source RTS featuring physics-based combat, terrain deformation, a large unit roster, and competitive multiplayer including co-op and campaigns.

GPL-2.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

StarCraft II+2

CrossWatch synchronizes watchlists, history, ratings and live scrobbles between Plex, Jellyfin, Emby and trackers like Trakt, SIMKL, AniList and MDBlist.

AGPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Simkl+3

Open-source media management system that exposes a FUSE-based virtual filesystem, automates discovery/scraping/downloading, and integrates with Plex/Jellyfin/Emby.

GPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Plex+3

Self-hosted media management app that unifies discovery, downloading, subtitles, streaming, and live TV with built-in indexers and Docker deployment.

GPL-3.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Radarr+10

Self-hosted web UI to manage HandBrakeCLI encoding queues across one or more headless worker machines, including directory watchers and GPU-accelerated transcoding.

AGPL-3.0Slowing down

Alternative to:

Encoding.com+2

Movary is a self-hosted web app to track, rate, and explore your movie watch history with statistics, integrations, and automatic scrobbling from media servers.

MITActively maintained

Alternative to:

Simkl+1

Self-hosted book-tracking web app to manage read/to-read lists, import/export libraries, tag books, write reviews and run a personal Goodreads-like library.

MITActively maintained

Alternative to:

Goodreads+4

Edit audio file metadata through a clean browser UI on headless servers, with bulk editing, smart suggestions, and album art management—no full music library stack required.

AGPL-3.0Slowing down

Alternative to:

MediaMonkey+5

Self-hostable game distribution platform for sharing DRM-free games, with a store UI, rich metadata management, and flexible authentication including SSO.

Self-hosted meme search engine that indexes images with local AI captions and vector embeddings for fast semantic and keyword search, tagging, and filtering.

Apache-2.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Google Photos+5

Web-based “time machine” for Home Assistant: browse YAML snapshots, view diffs, and restore individual automations, scripts, dashboards, ESPHome and packages.

MITActively maintained

Alternative to:

Acronis Cyber Protect+13

Unified web UI and REST API to process, review, and train facial recognition images across multiple detection backends, with MQTT and NVR integrations.

MITActively maintained

Alternative to:

Ring Protect+10

Open-source platform to stream torrent media, generate direct-download links and on-the-fly ZIP archives; distributed as an all-in-one Docker image.

MITSlowing down

Alternative to:

Webtor.io+8

Open-source web music player that builds a library from YouTube/SoundCloud sources, with Spotify playlist import, themes, lyrics, and multi-device syncing.

MITActively maintained

Alternative to:

Spotify+9

Self-hosted web app to catalog and track personal books with lists, reading progress, ratings, notes, OpenLibrary search, Mastodon sharing, and CSV/JSON export.

Apache-2.0Actively maintained

Alternative to:

Goodreads+7

Self-hosted personal photo gallery focused on speed, seamless zoom, and non-destructive filesystem-based collections with fast indexing and progressive loading.

MITActively maintained

Alternative to:

Google Photos+9

Web app that recommends artists based on a Lidarr library, using Last.fm for discovery and optionally adding recommended artists to Lidarr.

MITActively maintained

Alternative to:

Last.fm+3

Lightweight, customizable Discord music bot in Python. Supports YouTube, SoundCloud, Spotify, Twitch, Lavalink playback, playlists, lyrics, slash commands and Docker.

MITActively maintained

Alternative to:

FredBoat+2