StartOS
Browser-based, graphical Operating System (OS) that makes running a personal server as easy as running a personal computer.
Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Still maintained? Yes: 567 commits in the last 90 days, latest release start-os/v0.4.0.4 (Oct 2026).
Comparisons in Self-hosting Solutions: Cloudron Cloud alternatives, Heroku alternatives.
At a glance
StartOS quick facts
- Health score
- 83/100 GOOD
- Stars
- 1,994
- Last commit
- today (Oct 2026)
- Latest release
- start-os/v0.4.0.4, Oct 2026
- Licence
- MIT
Top alternatives to StartOS
In its own words
The project's README opens: "Products live under projects/ and reuse code from shared-libs/. The OS, CLI, registry, and tunnel binaries are thin wrappers over the Rust start-core library; StartWRT owns its router backend and reuses that library's networking and utility modules. All Angular apps build through one root workspace; the SDK and container runtime have separate Node builds."
Why it ranks here
Health score explained
StartOS scores 83/100, #7 of 28 in Self-hosting Solutions: 567 commits in the last 90 days earn 35.0 of 35 points, the latest release (start-os/v0.4.0.4, 3 days ago) earns 25.0 of 25, 1,994 stars add 13.2 of 20, an active, unarchived repository keeps 10 and no advertised Docker image leaves the final 10 unclaimed. That places it in the good band (70 and above). The biggest shortfall is Docker support, worth 10.0 more points.
Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.
- Commit activity 35.0 / 35
567 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)
- Release recency 25.0 / 25
start-os/v0.4.0.4 released 3 days ago
- Stars 13.2 / 20
2k stars on GitHub (logarithmic)
- Not archived 10.0 / 10
Repository is active
- Docker support biggest shortfall 0.0 / 10
No Docker support advertised
Commit activity
- 567
- Last 90 days
- 1,390
- Last 12 months
- today
- Last push
Ranked #7 of 28 tools in Self-hosting Solutions by health , between DockSTARTer (#6) and Websoft9 (#8) .
Details
| Licence | MIT |
| Platforms | Rust |
| Latest release | start-os/v0.4.0.4 · 3 days ago |
| Stars | 1,994 |
| Open issues | 160 |
| Docker | Not advertised |
| Repository | Start9Labs/start-technologies ↗ |
StartOS vs its top 5 alternatives
Active tools that share a category with StartOS (Self-hosting Solutions), scored on the same five terms.
| Tool | Health | Stars | Licence | Last commit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Umbrel | 96 | 12k | ⊘ Proprietary | 1 month ago |
| YunoHost | 84 | 3k | AGPL-3.0 | yesterday |
| DockSTARTer | 83 | 2.6k | MIT | 9 days ago |
| StartOS (this tool) | 83 | 2k | MIT | today |
| FreedomBox | 52 | 65 | AGPL-3.0 | 14 days ago |
| Sandstorm | 25 | 7.1k | Apache-2.0 | yesterday |
StartOS: common questions
Is StartOS still maintained?
StartOS had 567 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was today; the latest tagged release, start-os/v0.4.0.4, is from 3 days ago. Repoly recomputes this nightly.