Stash Review, Pricing & Features

Stash is a free, open-source, self-hosted media organizer written in Go with tagging, metadata scraping, statistics, and plugin support.

Category
Media & Audio/Video Tools
Pricing
open-source, from Free
Verified
Not yet
Last updated
July 19, 2026
Web AppOpen SourceSelf-Hosted

What Is Stash

Stash is a free, open-source, self-hosted web application for organizing personal media collections. It runs on the user's own hardware rather than in the cloud, giving full control over how files are stored, tagged, and browsed.

The project is maintained by the stashapp open-source community and distributed at stashapp.cc. It is written primarily in Go with a TypeScript front end, and is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. It should not be confused with the unrelated Stash investing and personal finance app; stashapp.cc is strictly a self-hosted media organizer.

Key Features

Stash lets users tag, categorize, and search their media library, and gathers metadata automatically through an extensible plugin and scraper system built by the community. It tracks statistics across performers, tags, and studios, and integrates with StashDB, a crowd-sourced metadata repository that scrapers can pull structured information from.

The application supports a wide range of video and image formats and uses ffmpeg for transcoding (downloading it automatically if not already installed). It runs via Docker or as a native application on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and is accessed through a local web interface.

Pricing

Stash is entirely free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 license. There is no paid tier from the core project; the community also supports the project through voluntary contributions via Open Collective. Some third-party providers offer paid managed hosting for Stash, but the software itself is free to self-host.

Key Features

Pros & Cons

Pros

  • Completely free and open source under AGPL-3.0
  • Full local control over media library and metadata, no cloud dependency
  • Active community with extensive plugin and scraper ecosystem
  • Cross-platform support via Docker, Windows, macOS, and Linux
  • Detailed statistics and organization tools for large collections

Cons

  • Requires self-hosting and basic technical setup (Docker or manual install)
  • No official cloud-hosted version from the core project
  • Metadata scraping quality depends on community-maintained scrapers
  • Not related to and easily confused with the Stash personal finance investing app

Pricing

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Stash the same as the Stash investing app

No. Stash (stashapp.cc) is an open-source, self-hosted media organizer written in Go. It is unrelated to the Stash personal finance and investing app.

Is Stash free to use

Yes, Stash is free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 license, with no official paid tier.

What operating systems does Stash support

Stash runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and is commonly deployed via Docker.

How do I access Stash once it is running

Stash is accessed through a local web interface, available by default at localhost:9999.

Does Stash require ffmpeg

Yes, Stash requires ffmpeg for transcoding and will download a copy automatically if it is not already installed.

What is StashDB

StashDB is a crowd-sourced repository of scene, studio, and performer metadata that Stash's scrapers can use to enrich a user's library.

What programming language is Stash written in

Stash is written primarily in Go, with a TypeScript front end.

Where can I get support for Stash

Support is available through the official documentation at docs.stashapp.cc, a Discord server, and GitHub discussions.

Related Tools