HomeBox is a free, self-hosted home inventory app written in Go. See how the SysAdminsMedia fork works, its features and self-hosting requirements.
HomeBox is a self-hosted, open-source application for tracking everything a household owns, from electronics and furniture to documents and warranties, without handing that data to a third-party cloud service. It was created to be simple to deploy, lightweight to run, and fast to use, favoring a single Go binary and an embedded SQLite database over a heavier multi-service architecture.
The project changed hands in 2024 when its original creator, hay-kot, archived the repository after development stalled. A group of IT administrators operating as SysAdmins Media hard-forked the codebase, migrated the database schema forward, and resumed active development, so existing users could keep their data and continue receiving updates under the new sysadminsmedia/homebox repository.
HomeBox lets users organize belongings into categories, locations and nested sub-locations, apply tags and custom fields, and search across the entire inventory instantly. Each item can carry photos, attached documents such as receipts or manuals, purchase price and date, and warranty or maintenance expiration tracking with reminders.
Because the whole stack, backend, database and frontend, ships in a single container or binary, deployment is a one-line Docker run command, and the app stays responsive even on very modest hardware like a Raspberry Pi, with idle memory usage generally under 50 megabytes.
HomeBox is free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 license, with no official paid tier, subscription, or usage limits imposed by the project itself. Anyone can download, self-host and modify it at no cost, provided any publicly hosted modified version also shares its source per the AGPL terms.
Users who do not want to manage their own server can pay third-party managed hosting providers, such as ElfHosted, to run a HomeBox instance for them; that hosting fee goes to the third-party provider rather than to the HomeBox project, which does not sell a first-party cloud plan.
Yes, HomeBox is completely free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 license. There is no official paid tier from the project itself.
Yes, HomeBox is self-hosted, so you need basic familiarity with Docker or running a Go binary on a server, NAS or Raspberry Pi. Non-technical users can pay a third-party host like ElfHosted to run it for them.
The original project by developer hay-kot stalled in 2024 and was archived. A group called SysAdmins Media hard-forked the code and continues active development at sysadminsmedia/homebox on GitHub.
Yes, the SysAdminsMedia fork migrated the original database schema forward, so existing users can upgrade to the continuation without losing their inventory data.
HomeBox is written in Go with an embedded SQLite database and a bundled web UI, packaged as a single binary or Docker container.
Alternatives include commercial home inventory apps like Sortly, spreadsheet-based tracking, and other self-hosted asset trackers such as Snipe-IT, which is more IT-asset focused.