A machine already at home
A NAS, an old laptop or a mini PC that is on anyway. It costs you nothing more than it does today, and your tasks never leave the house. Your phone reaches it from outside through the usual ways people reach home servers.
What it costs
OpenTodo is free. All of it, for everyone, for good.
No plan, no trial, no free tier with limits, no per-person price, no paid feature, for one person or a whole household. It is free software under the AGPL-3.0 licence, which also means nobody can turn it into a subscription later. The only thing it asks of you is a server to run on, and this page says in words what that server costs and who does the work.
- Server binary
- about 26 MB
- Database
- one SQLite file
- Runs on
- amd64 and arm64
The software: free, for one person or a hundred
Every feature is in the one free version: sharing, reminders, boards, filters, calendar, backups, single sign-on, encryption, the API. Nothing unlocks with a payment, and every person on your server gets their own account at no cost.
- No subscription, no free tier with limits, no upgrade button anywhere in the app
- The AGPL-3.0 licence lets you run, study, change and share it; what that means for you
- No account with anyone but your own server; your devices talk only to it
- The optional AI assistant uses your own key with the provider you choose, so any cost there is between you and them, and nothing at all if you leave it off
The server
Where it can live
OpenTodo is one container with one folder of data, no database server beside it. The three usual homes, cheapest first:
A Raspberry Pi
A one-off purchase, then a few watts of electricity. OpenTodo ships for its processor, so it runs there like anywhere else.
A small rented server
The smallest plan of any hosting provider is more than enough; OpenTodo shares it happily with whatever else you run there. That is a monthly cost, but one for the whole household or team, not per person.
Not sure which? Answer four questions and get the file to run it · How to install it, three ways
The work
One person sets it up. Everyone else just uses an app.
The honest cost of self-hosting is time, and it falls on one person.
- The first time
- Starting the container and creating the owner account takes a few minutes; giving it an address and HTTPS is the part that takes longer if you have never done it. Coolify does that part for you.
- Every few weeks
- Updating is pulling the new image and restarting; the database updates itself on start. Release notes are on What's new and in the feed.
- Once, then never again
- Turn on scheduled backups to a folder, S3-compatible storage or WebDAV. After that they run on their own.
- Everyone else
- Opens the link they were sent, installs the app from the browser and uses it like any other task app. No setup, no cost, no account with a company.
Compared with a plan per person
How the two add up
A subscription app
A free plan with limits, then a monthly or yearly plan per person for the full app. A household of four or a team of five pays four or five times, every month, for as long as they use it. Your lists live on the company's servers.
OpenTodo
One server, whatever it costs you, for everyone on it, with every feature. The person who runs it spends a little time. If you ever stop, everyone downloads their data as one file and takes it elsewhere.
Where the money goes
Nowhere, by default. OpenTodo sells nothing, has no paid tier and takes no cut of your hosting. It is built in the open by one maintainer and contributors; if it earns a place in your day, a star on GitHub or a coffee is welcome, and never expected.
Try it before you spend anything.
The demo runs in your browser with nothing to install. When you like it, put it on a server you already have.