homelab-starter — Your own Netflix, Google Drive, and smart home. One command.

// how it works

Three steps, then it's yours.

No reading documentation. No editing config files. Just answer a few questions.

Paste one command

Open a terminal on your home server and paste the install command. homelab-starter checks that Docker is installed and offers to install it automatically if it's missing.

~30 seconds

Pick your apps by category

Choose which categories interest you — Media, Smart Home, Productivity, and more. Then pick exactly which apps within each. 53 apps total, but you only ever see the ones you care about.

~2 minutes

Bookmark your dashboard

homelab-starter starts everything, prints the URL for each app, and saves a connection guide showing how to link your phone or desktop to each service. Done.

~5 minutes total

homelab-starter

→ homelab-starter Server IP detected: 192.168.0.101 ? Which categories do you want? (space select, enter confirm) ✓ Your Digital Life (6 apps) ✓ Media (6 apps) ○ Media Automation (6 apps) ✓ Smart Home (3 apps) ? Media: (space toggle, enter confirm) ✓ Jellyfin — Free media server, no account ✓ Immich — Self-hosted Google Photos ○ Plex — Media server with TV apps

// 53 apps included

Everything for your home server.

From movies to smart home control — all running on your hardware, not someone else's cloud.

Your digital life

🔐

Vaultwarden

Password manager you fully own. No subscription.

💰

Actual Budget

Track money without giving data to a startup.

☁️

Nextcloud

Files, calendar, contacts — your own Google Drive.

🔄

Syncthing

Sync files between all your devices. No cloud needed.

📅

Baikal

Calendar and contacts server — syncs to any phone app.

💾

NAS Bundle

Network drive + browser-based file manager.

Media

🎬

Jellyfin

Watch movies & shows anywhere. Free, no account.

📺

Plex

Full-featured media server with TV apps included.

📷

Immich

Auto-backup every photo. Like Google Photos, but yours.

🎵

Navidrome

Stream your music collection from any device.

📚

Kavita

Read ebooks, manga, and comics with a built-in reader.

🎧

Audiobookshelf

Audiobook and podcast server with a mobile app.

Media automation

📡

Sonarr

Auto-downloads TV shows — grabs new episodes for you.

🎞️

Radarr

Auto-downloads movies and monitors for better quality.

🔍

Prowlarr

Manages all your torrent and usenet sources in one place.

⬇️

qBittorrent

Torrent client with a web UI.

🎭

Jellyseerr

Let family request shows and movies through a nice UI.

🌍

Bazarr

Auto-downloads subtitles for your media library.

🤖

Ollama + Open WebUI

Run AI models locally (Llama, Mistral) with a ChatGPT-style interface.

Smart home

🏠

Home Assistant

Control every smart device. 3,000+ integrations, no cloud.

🛒

Grocy

Pantry tracker and shopping list manager.

🍽️

Mealie

Recipe box with meal planning and shopping export.

Networking

🌐

Caddy

Routes your domain to services. HTTPS automatic.

🦆

DuckDNS

Free domain that always points to your home IP.

🔒

Tailscale

Reach your server securely from anywhere.

🚫

Pi-hole

Blocks ads for every device on your WiFi.

🛡️

AdGuard Home

DNS-based ad and tracker blocking — Pi-hole alternative.

Security

🔰

CrowdSec

Auto-blocks hackers using shared threat intelligence.

🔑

Authentik

One login screen for all your self-hosted apps.

Documents

📄

Paperless-ngx

Scan, tag, and search every paper document.

📑

Stirling-PDF

Convert, merge, split PDFs — totally offline.

Productivity

⚙️

n8n

Workflow automation — connect your apps like Zapier, self-hosted.

🐙

Gitea

Your own private GitHub — code, issues, pull requests.

📖

BookStack

Wiki and knowledge base for your docs and notes.

✅

Vikunja

To-do lists and project management — self-hosted Todoist.

📋

Planka

Kanban boards — self-hosted Trello.

📰

Miniflux

Minimalist RSS reader — follow any site without an account.

🔖

Hoarder

AI-powered bookmark manager with auto-tagging and full-text search.

Communication

💬

Matrix + Element

End-to-end encrypted messaging — your own Signal.

💼

Mattermost

Team messaging and file sharing — self-hosted Slack.

📣

ntfy

Push notifications from any script to your phone.

Monitoring

⏱️

Uptime Kuma

Alerts you when any service goes down.

📋

Dozzle

Read live container logs from the browser.

📊

Beszel

CPU, RAM, disk usage charted over time.

👁️

Changedetection.io

Alerts when any webpage changes.

💽

Scrutiny

Hard drive health monitoring — know before a drive dies.

📈

Grafana + Prometheus

Metrics dashboards — visualize anything on your server.

🌡️

Netdata

Real-time CPU, RAM, disk, and network per-process.

🏥

Healthchecks

Alerts when a backup or scheduled task didn't run.

Management

🐳

Portainer

See and control all your containers in a web UI.

🏡

Homepage

Your homelab dashboard — all apps in one place.

Maintenance (always included)

🔄

Watchtower

Keeps your apps updated automatically, every night.

💊

Autoheal

Restarts crashed containers automatically.

// why homelab-starter

Built for everyone, not just sysadmins.

No Cloudflare account required. No license tiers. No breaking upgrades.

⚡

Works on any DNS provider

Namecheap, Route53, Porkbun — no Cloudflare lock-in. Point your domain wherever it already lives.

🔑

Passwords generated for you

Every app that needs a secret key or database password gets a cryptographically secure one. No copy-pasting required.

📱

Connection guide included

After setup, a personalized guide tells you exactly how to connect your phone or desktop to each service you installed.

💚

Fully open source, always free

No Basic / Plus / Pro tiers. No membership wall. Every feature in the repo, forever.

Feature	homelab-starter	Deployrr	DockSTARTer
curl \| bash install	✓	Partial	✗
Auto-install Docker	✓	✓	✗
Auto-generated secrets	✓	✗	✗
Works without Cloudflare	✓	✗	✓
Category-by-category selection	✓	✗	✗
Per-app connection guide	✓	✗	✗
Caddy / NPM / no proxy	Choice	Traefik only	Partial
Fully open source	✓	Freemium	✓

Your own Netflix, Google Drive, and smart home hub.