Methodology

The health score

Every tool gets a health score from 0 to 100: the sum of five terms, rounded to a whole number. Scores of 70 and above are good, 40 to 69 slowing, and below 40 stale. This is version 1 of the formula; changing it is a versioned event announced on the open data page.

• Commit activity, 35 points. Commits in the last 90 days, divided by 30 and capped at 1. Thirty or more commits in 90 days earns all 35 points.
• Release recency, 25 points. Full marks while the latest tagged release is 180 days old or newer, falling in a straight line to zero at 720 days. No tagged release scores zero.
• Stars, 20 points. log₁₀(stars + 1) ÷ 5, capped at 1. Logarithmic, so attention counts but cannot buy a ranking: 100,000 stars is worth about twice 300 stars.
• Not archived, 10 points. All 10 points unless the repository is archived.
• Docker support, 10 points. All 10 points when the project publishes a Docker image or Compose file, the clearest sign that self-hosting is supported.

Health is the only ranking signal on Repoly. Comparison pages, category pages and the full tool list all sort by it, and a tool's page shows each term so you can see where its points come from and where it loses them.

Where the data comes from

The catalogue of self-hosted software is seeded from awesome-selfhosted-data (CC BY-SA 3.0): names, one-line descriptions, licences, categories and project links. Repository counters come from the public GitHub API, and for projects hosted elsewhere from the GitLab and Gitea/Forgejo APIs (Codeberg included). 1230 of 1346 tools currently have measured counters; a project on a forge with no public API stays listed but unscored, and its page is not indexed. The mapping of tools to the 143 proprietary products they replace is our own, kept in the repository and reviewed by hand. Full attribution is on the data page.

How often it changes

A scheduled job runs every night: it fetches fresh counters, recomputes every score, and records one point a week per tool for the health-over-time chart on tool pages. The site rebuilds from that data. Page dates in our sitemap move only when a page's content changes: an editorial edit, a tool joining or leaving a list, or a tool moving between the good, slowing and stale bands. Day-to-day star and commit counts do not re-date a page.

How tools are added and removed

A tool appears when it is listed in awesome-selfhosted-data, and leaves when it is removed there. We never add a tool to a comparison that is not in the catalogue. Comparison pages are added when a proprietary product has real self-hosted replacements, and a comparison whose tools are not like-for-like replacements is marked as such and kept out of search. Comparisons with fewer than 3 measured, active tools, category pages without a written introduction, licence pages, and tool pages without enough measured data or search interest stay on the site for readers but are marked noindex.

Spotted a missing tool, a wrong category or a score that looks off? Email [email protected] with the repository link.

Advertising policy

Repoly is funded by labelled placements that never touch rankings. On tool pages that ship a Docker image, a "Run it" block may list hosting providers through affiliate links; it is marked Sponsored, carries the disclosure sentence, and its links are marked sponsored and nofollow for search engines. A sponsor slot, when sold, carries a SPONSORED strip and is never shown as a top pick. A page about an advertiser's own topic (a meeting transcriber beside the Zoom and Teams comparisons and their tools, a VPN beside the VPN ones) carries it in the top bar, the corner card and once below the content. Other pages carry one affiliate offer in the top bar and, on larger screens, the corner card. Every placement is labelled. Details are on the advertise page.

Who is behind it

Repoly is built and maintained by FlyMe Studio. More on the project is on the about page.