Self-Hosted Apps Built with Node.js

43 self-hostable apps built with Node.js you can run on your own server — compared on specs, deployment difficulty, and the SaaS each one replaces.

Workflow automation

Activepieces

A no-code automation builder positioned as an open-source replacement for Zapier: a visual flow editor, a large library of 'pieces' (connectors) written in TypeScript, and MCP servers in the open core (its AI agents and Chat are paid-layer features). The Community Edition core is MIT-licensed; access control, audit logs, Git sync and multi-project features are sold as paid editions. Runs as one container for hobby use or a four-service compose stack for production.

TypeScriptNode.jsPostgreSQLRedis

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Personal finance

Actual Budget

A fast, local-first envelope-budgeting app with optional self-hosted sync. Most people are up and budgeting in minutes — privacy without the spreadsheet.

JavaScriptNode.js

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AFFiNE

A workspace that combines documents, whiteboards and databases on one canvas, with a local-first editor and real-time collaboration. The self-hosted server runs with PostgreSQL and Redis; upstream plans for at least 2 GB of RAM.

TypeScriptNode.jsRustPostgreSQLRedis

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AI Chat Interfaces

AnythingLLM

All-in-one self-hosted chat application with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) over your own documents, organized into workspaces, and support for any local or hosted LLM and vector database.

JavaScriptNode.jsReact

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Audiobookshelf

A self-hosted audiobook and podcast server with progress sync across apps — host your own Audible-style library and listen anywhere.

JavaScriptNode.js

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Platform-as-a-Service

CapRover

A free PaaS (Apache-2.0 with a CapRover appendix) that turns any Docker Swarm server into a one-click app deployment platform, with a built-in reverse proxy, free SSL, and a one-click app marketplace.

TypeScriptNode.js

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Checkmate

An uptime and incident monitor with HTTP, ping, port, SSL, Docker and game-server checks, PageSpeed reports and status pages, wrapped in an unusually polished dashboard. Hardware metrics come from a separate agent called Capture rather than from the app itself.

TypeScriptNode.jsMongoDB

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Developer tools

code-server

VS Code running on a server and opened in the browser, so you can edit code and use a terminal on a remote machine from any device. It is maintained by Coder and protected by a password by default.

TypeScriptNode.js

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Dashy

A personal dashboard for organising links to your self-hosted services, with status checks, widgets, themes and an in-browser config editor; the configuration is stored in a YAML file.

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Directus

Instant REST and GraphQL APIs plus a customizable admin app layered over any SQL database — a data platform for turning an existing or new database into a headless CMS/backend.

Node.jsTypeScript

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Docmost

A collaborative wiki and documentation tool that positions itself as an open-source alternative to Confluence and Notion: real-time co-editing, spaces, groups and permissions, comments, page history, search, attachments, and built-in Draw.io, Excalidraw, and Mermaid diagrams. The core is AGPL-3.0 and runs as one Node.js container beside PostgreSQL and Redis; Bases (databases), SSO, AI features, audit logs, and SCIM are licensed Business/Enterprise features.

TypeScriptNode.jsPostgreSQLRedis

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Ghost

A Node.js publishing platform for blogs and paid newsletters, with built-in member signups, email delivery and Stripe subscriptions.

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No-code database

Grist

A relational spreadsheet from Grist Labs: tables with typed columns and Python formulas, linked widgets, forms and access rules, stored as SQLite documents on your own server.

TypeScriptNode.jsPython

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HedgeDoc

A real-time collaborative Markdown editor: several people edit the same note in the browser at once, and notes can be published as read-only pages or presented as slides. Formerly known as CodiMD.

Node.jsTypeScriptPostgreSQL

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Photo backup & gallery

Immich

Blazing-fast self-hosted photo and video backup with ML search, faces, and a great mobile app. The Google Photos killer.

TypeScriptNode.js

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Secrets management

Infisical

An open-source platform for managing application secrets, certificates and privileged access, with per-environment secret storage, a CLI, SDKs and Kubernetes integration. The core is MIT-licensed; features under the ee/ directories need a paid enterprise license.

TypeScriptNode.jsPostgreSQLRedis

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Joplin Server

The self-hosted sync server for the Joplin note-taking apps, storing notes in PostgreSQL and adding note sharing and multi-user accounts. It is free for personal, non-commercial use under its own license; commercial use needs a separate license.

TypeScriptNode.jsPostgreSQL

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Kutt

A URL shortener with custom domains, custom slugs, password-protected and expiring links, per-link statistics and an API. The default Docker setup uses SQLite, with Postgres, MariaDB and Redis as options.

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AI Chat Interfaces

LibreChat

Open-source, multi-provider AI chat platform unifying OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Azure, and local models behind one UI, with agents, RAG, code interpreter, and MCP tool support.

TypeScriptReactNode.jsMongoDB

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Logto

An open-source authentication and authorization service built on OIDC and OAuth 2.1, with multi-tenancy, SSO, RBAC and prebuilt sign-in flows for SaaS and AI apps. It runs as a Node.js service on PostgreSQL, with a separate admin console.

TypeScriptNode.jsPostgreSQL

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Social network (Fediverse)

Mastodon

A decentralized microblogging server built on ActivityPub. Each server runs its own community and federates with other Mastodon and Fediverse servers.

RubyRailsNode.jsPostgreSQLRedis

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Medusa

A headless commerce platform and framework for Node.js and TypeScript: products, carts, orders, payments, promotions and regions as modules behind a REST API, with a React Admin dashboard served from the same process. You extend it in code with your own modules, workflows and subscribers, and bring your own storefront (a Next.js starter is optional). It runs on PostgreSQL, with Redis for production. The repository is MIT apart from its Enterprise Edition materials (role-based access control and SSO), which are proprietary.

TypeScriptNode.jsPostgreSQLReact

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Workflow automation

n8n

A fair-code workflow automation tool — connect APIs and build automations visually, self-hosted so your data and credentials never leave your server.

TypeScriptNode.js

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Nginx Proxy Manager

Put your self-hosted apps behind clean domains with automatic Let's Encrypt TLS — all from a point-and-click web UI. The fastest way to get HTTPS on a home server without touching a config file.

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Low-code internal tools

NocoBase

A data-model-driven no-code and low-code platform: define collections and fields, then compose pages, blocks, workflows and permissions over them in the browser, with a plugin architecture for everything else. The Community Edition is published under the NocoBase License Agreement, which incorporates Apache-2.0 and adds supplementary terms (keep the NocoBase branding, do not offer it as a low-code SaaS); paid Standard, Professional and Enterprise editions lift those limits and add commercial plugins.

TypeScriptNode.jsPostgreSQL

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Workflow automation

Node-RED

A flow-based programming tool for event-driven applications: a browser editor where you wire together nodes from a palette, on a light Node.js runtime that is equally at home on a Raspberry Pi and in the cloud. Originally built by IBM's Emerging Technology Services team, now an OpenJS Foundation project under Apache-2.0 with thousands of community-contributed nodes. It is the pick for MQTT, hardware and event plumbing more than for SaaS-to-SaaS automation — and its editor ships with no login until you configure one.

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NodeBB

A Node.js forum platform with real-time posting and notifications, a plugin and theme ecosystem, and ActivityPub federation so a forum can follow and be followed from the Fediverse. It is GPL-3.0 and stores its data in MongoDB, PostgreSQL or Redis; the official container runs the forum and launches a browser-based installer on first start.

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OpenSearch

A distributed search and analytics engine with a REST API, a query DSL, aggregations, k-NN vector search and the OpenSearch Dashboards UI for exploring and visualising what you index: the community fork of Elasticsearch and Kibana. Apache-2.0 licensed, Java on Lucene with a Node.js Dashboards server; it runs as a JVM node (or cluster) plus a separate Dashboards container, and the bundled demo security config gives you TLS and an admin login out of the box.

JavaLuceneNode.js

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Outline

A polished, real-time collaborative team knowledge base with a great editor and search. Heavier to run, but the closest self-hosted feel to Notion.

TypeScriptNode.js

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Papra

A minimalist document management and archiving platform: upload, tag and full-text search documents, share them within organizations, and import them automatically from email or a watched folder, with text extraction from images and scans. Runs as a single container with an embedded SQLite database.

TypeScriptNode.jsSolidJSSQLite

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PeerTube

A self-hosted video hosting and live-streaming platform that federates with other PeerTube instances over ActivityPub. It handles uploads, transcoding, channels and playlists.

TypeScriptNode.jsPostgreSQLRedis

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Photo backup & gallery

PiGallery2

A directory-first web photo gallery: point it at a folder of photos and videos and it indexes them into a browsable, searchable gallery, reading the originals without modifying them.

TypeScriptNode.jsAngular

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PsiTransfer

A file-sharing web app without user accounts: upload files into a bucket, set an expiry time or one-time download, optionally password-protect it, and share the link. Uploads and downloads are resumable and there is no end-to-end encryption.

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Rocket.Chat

A feature-packed open-source team chat with channels and omnichannel support built in, plus voice and video through marketplace call apps. The most extensible self-hosted Slack alternative if you want everything in one platform.

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Media automation

Seerr

A media request and discovery app for Jellyfin, Plex and Emby: users browse and request movies and shows, and approved requests are passed to Sonarr and Radarr. Seerr is the 2026 merger of Overseerr and Jellyseerr into one codebase.

TypeScriptNode.jsNext.js

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Strapi

A headless CMS built on Node.js. You design content types in an admin Content-Type Builder, and Strapi generates a REST API, role-based permissions and a media library for them, with GraphQL available as a plugin. It runs as a project you scaffold and deploy yourself.

Node.jsTypeScriptReactPostgreSQL

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Trilium Notes

A hierarchical note-taking app for building a personal knowledge base, with rich-text and code notes, note cloning, per-note encryption and scripting. The server edition serves a web UI and acts as the sync server for the Trilium desktop app.

TypeScriptNode.jsSQLite

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Project Management

tududi

Personal task and project manager that organizes work into areas, projects, tasks and notes, with tags, recurring tasks, Telegram integration and CalDAV sync. Stores data in a single SQLite file by default, with PostgreSQL supported.

TypeScriptNode.jsExpressReactSQLite

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Uptime Kuma

A slick self-hosted uptime monitor and status page — HTTP, TCP, ping, and more, with notifications to nearly anything. One container, zero fuss.

JavaScriptNode.js

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Developer tools

Verdaccio

A lightweight private npm registry that hosts your own packages and caches the public npm registry as a proxy. It stores packages on local disk and needs no external database.

TypeScriptNode.js

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WBO

A free, open-source online collaborative whiteboard: draw, write and add shapes on a board that everyone with the link sees update in real time. No accounts; the server saves each board as an SVG file. Node.js with no database.

Node.jsJavaScript

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VPN & Mesh Networking

wg-easy

The easiest way to run your own WireGuard VPN server, with a clean web UI for adding and managing clients — a self-hosted alternative to Tailscale and commercial VPNs for private access to your network from anywhere.

TypeScriptNode.js

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Wiki.js

A Node.js wiki with a modern admin area, Markdown and visual (WYSIWYG) editors, and a wide set of pluggable modules — local, social, and enterprise auth (LDAP, SAML, OIDC, CAS) with optional 2FA are all part of the free AGPL-3.0 build. It brings its own web server but no database: PostgreSQL is the recommended engine, and the other supported engines are slated to be dropped in the next major version.

Node.jsVuePostgreSQL

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