Almost every popular cloud service has an open-source alternative you can run on your own server. This list groups mature, actively maintained options by category, with notes on which one to pick and how heavy each is to run. “Light” apps fit easily on a small VPS. “Heavy” ones want 4 GB+ RAM on their own.

New to this? Start with self-hosting for beginners.

Files, photos and media

Replaces Self-hosted option Notes
Google Drive, Dropbox Nextcloud, Seafile, ownCloud Infinite Scale Nextcloud does the most; Seafile syncs fastest. Heavy-ish
Google Docs, Microsoft 365 ONLYOFFICE Docs, Collabora Online Plug into Nextcloud. Heavy
Google Photos Immich, PhotoPrism Immich feels closest to Google Photos. Heavy (ML)
Netflix / Plex Jellyfin Transcoding needs CPU or GPU
Spotify (your own music) Navidrome Light
Audible (your audiobooks) Audiobookshelf Light
Kindle library Calibre-Web, Kavita Light
Adobe Acrobat online tools Stirling-PDF CPU spikes during OCR

Passwords, security and access

Replaces Self-hosted option Notes
1Password, LastPass Vaultwarden (Bitwarden-compatible) Light; back it up carefully
Okta, Auth0 Authentik, Keycloak, Authelia SSO and 2FA for your apps
TeamViewer, AnyDesk RustDesk, Guacamole Light
Commercial VPNs (for private access) WireGuard, Headscale Very light
Pastebin PrivateBin Light, end-to-end encrypted

Work and collaboration

Replaces Self-hosted option Notes
Notion, Confluence Outline, Wiki.js, BookStack, AFFiNE Outline is closest to Notion’s feel
Slack Mattermost, Rocket.Chat, Matrix/Synapse Medium
Zoom, Google Meet Jitsi Meet Bandwidth- and CPU-hungry for big calls
Trello, Jira Plane, Vikunja, Focalboard, Taiga Medium
Miro Excalidraw Light
Discord (voice) Mumble, TeamSpeak Light
Calendly / Google Forms Cal.com, Formbricks Medium
Pocket, Raindrop Wallabag, linkding Light
Feedly FreshRSS, Miniflux Light

Developers and DevOps

Replaces Self-hosted option Notes
GitHub, GitLab.com Gitea, Forgejo, GitLab CE Gitea is light; GitLab needs 4–8 GB
Heroku, Vercel Coolify, Dokploy, CapRover Builds need CPU and RAM
Pingdom, StatusPage Uptime Kuma Light
Datadog Prometheus + Grafana, Netdata Medium
Sentry (SaaS) Self-hosted Sentry, GlitchTip Sentry is heavy; GlitchTip is light
Firebase Supabase, Appwrite, PocketBase PocketBase is tiny
Airtable NocoDB, Baserow Medium
Bitly Shlink, YOURLS Light

Marketing, business and analytics

Replaces Self-hosted option Notes
Google Analytics Plausible, Umami, Matomo Cookieless options available
Mailchimp Listmonk, Mautic Needs a sending service or a well-configured mail server
Zapier n8n, Activepieces Medium
QuickBooks (small business) Invoice Ninja, Odoo, ERPNext Odoo/ERPNext are heavy
Mint, YNAB Firefly III, Actual Budget Light
Google Search SearXNG Light

AI

Replaces Self-hosted option Notes
ChatGPT interface Open WebUI, LibreChat Use API keys or local models
OpenAI API (local) LocalAI, Ollama Local models need lots of RAM, or a GPU
Chat with documents AnythingLLM, Dify RAG platforms
Transcription services Whisper server CPU-friendly with small models

How to choose

  • Activity: recent releases, active issues, more than one maintainer.
  • Resource needs: check the RAM requirements before you install. See how much RAM a VPS needs.
  • Data portability: can you export your data in a standard format?
  • Your time: every app is something to update and back up. Start with a few that you’ll actually use.

Where to run them

A single VPS with Docker can run a dozen light apps. Split heavy apps (Nextcloud with Office, GitLab, Immich, Jitsi) onto their own servers, and use a storage VPS for large files. See Docker VPS hosting.

  • Self-Hosting
  • Open Source
  • Privacy