6,000+ apps indexed, searchable by platform (Docker, Unraid, TrueNAS, Umbrel, ZimaOS, Proxmox, Helm), built because I kept hitting the same question: where does this app actually run?

Our Local Host is a site I built because I kept hitting the same problem: I’d find an open-source or self-hostable app and have no idea where it would run, TrueNAS? Unraid? Was there an alternative to this or that?

So I made my own. It’s a searchable directory of self-hosted apps and open-source alternatives, organised by the platform they run on.

This is very much a work in progress, and I’m hoping it becomes community-run: suggest an edit to fix outdated or incorrect app data, submit an app I’ve missed, or request a guide and I’ll make it (Patreon supporters get notified when it drops).

Why I built it

I picked React because this is a component-heavy UI, a lot of repeated cards and list elements that need to render fast, and React makes building and reusing those components easy. TypeScript and Tailwind are simply what I’m used to and most productive in.

The first version ran on the Directus headless CMS, and that choice is the product lesson: I over-bought editing flexibility for a dataset that only changes at the edges. The data layer now runs on Postgres fed by an automated Python scraper fleet, so platform support updates itself instead of waiting for me to edit cards, and the front-end rebuild reads straight from that single source of truth.

What’s coming

A rebuild is in progress. The goals:

New design, bringing the directory in line with the visual language I use across my other apps, and giving each listing more detail and context.
Better search, faster, smarter filtering across platforms and categories.
Lighter backend, moving off the Directus CMS onto a direct Postgres database, with a dbt model building the front-page data. Less overhead, faster pages, easier to keep current.
Self-sustaining index, the pipeline that collects and indexes app data across platforms is currently manual, so staying up to date is a pain. I’m rebuilding it to run and refresh on its own.

The goal: get away from big tech, but stay high-tech.