The XDA piece on NAS owners who only use their box for a nightly 3am backup nailed the missed opportunity. The drives are spinning, the CPU is idle, the network stack is warm. A modern NAS is the only always-on Linux machine most households have, and its real payoff shows up when it hosts the services people would otherwise pay a monthly bill for. Once Docker is wired up (via Synology Container Manager, TrueNAS apps, Unraid Community Applications, or plain docker-compose on a mini-PC), the subscription savings pile up quickly.
We tested 8 apps that run 24/7 on Synology, Unraid, and TrueNAS to replace paid subscriptions with local services. The lineup covers personal cloud (Nextcloud), photo backup (Immich), media streaming (Jellyfin), DNS-level ad blocking (Pi-hole), smart-home automation (Home Assistant), passwords (Vaultwarden), documents (Paperless-ngx), and self-monitoring (Uptime Kuma). Every pick ships as a maintained Docker image, sits well below 1GB of idle RAM, and has a mobile client the rest of the household can actually use.
What to look for in a 24/7 NAS app
Not every self-hosted project earns a permanent slot on an appliance that stays powered on all year. The ones that do share a few traits:
- A first-party Docker image with a versioned tag and a
:latestthat the maintainers actually push. If the container comes from a stranger’s personal Docker Hub account, skip it. - Active maintenance in the last 90 days. Check the GitHub commit graph before you commit to migrating a family off a paid service.
- An idle RAM footprint you can budget. Under 512MB is the mark; anything that idles at 2GB will crowd out the other services.
- A mobile client that the rest of the household will accept. Nobody in the family will SSH into your NAS to check something.
- Named Docker volumes and a documented backup procedure. Container-native persistence is the difference between a hobby project and a service you can rely on.
- Reverse-proxy friendliness. Traefik, Caddy, or NGINX Proxy Manager should be able to sit in front without a config battle, because remote access needs TLS.
Quick comparison
| App | Best for | Platforms | Free plan | Starting price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nextcloud | Dropbox and Google Drive replacement | Linux, Docker, Synology, Unraid, TrueNAS | Free, self-hosted | Free (Nextcloud-hosted plans from around 5/month) |
| Immich | Google Photos replacement with face recognition | Linux, Docker | Free, fully | Free |
| Jellyfin | Netflix and Plex alternative for owned media | Linux, Docker, Windows, macOS | Free, fully | Free |
| Pi-hole | Network-wide DNS ad blocker | Linux, Docker, Raspberry Pi | Free, fully | Free |
| Home Assistant | Local-first smart home hub | Linux, Docker, HA OS | Free, fully | Free (optional Nabu Casa cloud around $6.50/month) |
| Vaultwarden | Self-hosted Bitwarden password vault | Linux, Docker | Free, fully | Free |
| Paperless-ngx | Paperless document archive with OCR | Linux, Docker | Free, fully | Free |
| Uptime Kuma | Self-hosted uptime monitor and status page | Linux, Docker | Free, fully | Free |
The 8 best apps to run 24/7 on a NAS
1. Nextcloud – best replacement for Dropbox and Google Drive
Nextcloud is where most self-hosted setups start. It handles file sync, calendars, contacts, notes, and lightweight collaborative editing through the Nextcloud Office app. Desktop clients cover Windows, macOS, and Linux with selective sync, and the mobile apps auto-upload the camera roll on iOS and Android. A NAS with 4GB of RAM comfortably serves a family of four.
Where it falls short: Out-of-the-box performance needs the recommended PHP-FPM, Redis, and OPcache tuning to feel snappy under load. External sharing links behind a reverse proxy require careful trusted_domains and overwrite.cli.url config.
Pricing:
- Free, open-source (AGPLv3)
- Nextcloud Enterprise support contracts available for organisations
Platforms: Linux, Docker, Synology (SynoCommunity package), TrueNAS Scale apps catalogue, Unraid Community Applications. Native desktop clients on Windows, macOS, Linux. Mobile clients on iOS and Android.
Download: Nextcloud
Bottom line: The default cloud replacement if you want to keep the whole household off Google Drive and Dropbox.
2. Immich – best replacement for Google Photos
Immich is the photo-and-video backup service that finally makes leaving Google Photos comfortable. Face recognition, object search, geolocation maps, shared albums, and background upload from iOS and Android all work out of the box. The machine-learning worker runs happily on ARM as well as x86, so a Synology DS923+ or a TrueNAS Mini can index a decade of camera roll without help from a GPU.
Where it falls short: Version numbers move fast, so a mobile client that gets ahead of the server (or the other way around) breaks uploads until you catch up. The maintainers still label the project as beta even though thousands of installs run it in production.
Pricing:
- Free, open-source (AGPLv3)
Platforms: Linux, Docker. Mobile clients on iOS and Android. Browser interface for desktops.
Download: Immich
Bottom line: The 2026 pick for anyone tired of paying Google for photo storage.
3. Jellyfin – best free media server for the whole house
Jellyfin is the open-source media server that took over from Plex for anyone who wanted to skip Plex Pass and the recent pricing shuffles. Hardware transcoding runs on Intel Quick Sync, Nvidia NVENC, and AMD VAAPI, and the client app coverage spans iOS, Android, Apple TV, Android TV, Roku, Fire TV, and LG webOS. No cloud sign-in, no Plex account, no telemetry surprises.
Where it falls short: First-run library scanning takes a while, and metadata cleanup rewards a bit of manual work. Dolby Vision Profile 7 and Atmos passthrough still need per-client configuration on a couple of platforms.
Pricing:
- Free, open-source
Platforms: Linux, Docker, Windows, macOS. Native TV clients on every major platform.
Download: Jellyfin
Bottom line: The pick if the household streams enough that Netflix, Disney+, and Max add up faster than the disk cost.
4. Pi-hole – best network-wide DNS ad blocker
Pi-hole turns the NAS into the DNS server for every device on the network. Smart TVs, IoT cameras, phones, and the kid’s Switch all resolve through it, and the tracker and ad blocklists apply transparently without per-device installs. The web UI shows per-client query breakdowns and blocklist hit rates in real time. Upstream DoH via cloudflared or Unbound is a standard add-on.
Where it falls short: YouTube ads served from the same origin as the video stream are a moving target, and DNS-level blocking does not catch them. A Pi-hole that goes offline knocks out name resolution for the whole network, so redundancy or a secondary DNS matters.
Pricing:
- Free, open-source
Platforms: Linux, Docker, Raspberry Pi. Synology and QNAP packages ship via Docker.
Download: Pi-hole
Bottom line: The pick if you want every device in the house to feel faster without touching each one.
5. Home Assistant – best local smart home hub
Home Assistant is the automation platform that runs the smart-home stack locally rather than through a vendor cloud. The integration catalogue crossed 2,000 in 2025 and covers Zigbee, Z-Wave, Matter, Thread, MQTT, and every mainstream vendor API. Automations run in YAML or in the graphical editor, and voice control ties in via the Assist pipeline. Runs on Docker, on the dedicated HA OS image, or through a Synology community package.
Where it falls short: The learning curve is real, especially the difference between the OS install and the Container install for what add-ons will and will not run. Cloud-only devices (some Wi-Fi cameras, first-gen smart plugs) still need vendor apps or Nabu Casa in the middle.
Pricing:
- Free, open-source
- Optional Nabu Casa cloud subscription (around $6.50/month) for remote access, Alexa, and Google Assistant integration
Platforms: Linux, Docker, dedicated HA OS on x86 or Raspberry Pi. Mobile apps on iOS and Android.
Download: Home Assistant
Bottom line: The pick if you want smart-home automation to keep working the day a vendor cloud goes down.
6. Vaultwarden – best self-hosted password manager
Vaultwarden is the Rust-based Bitwarden server rewrite that fits happily on a NAS. It speaks the full Bitwarden client protocol, so the official iOS, Android, browser, and desktop apps all connect to it. Idle RAM sits under 50MB, and storage requirements measure in megabytes. Family sharing, TOTP generation, attachment storage, and organisation features all work as they do on Bitwarden’s hosted plan.
Where it falls short: The upstream Bitwarden company does not maintain Vaultwarden, so major protocol changes occasionally take a release cycle to land. Bootstrapping the reverse proxy and TLS correctly matters more here than for any other app on this list.
Pricing:
- Free, open-source
Platforms: Linux, Docker. Every Bitwarden client on iOS, Android, browser, Windows, macOS, and Linux connects to it.
Download: Vaultwarden
Bottom line: The pick if you want the Bitwarden client experience without paying the yearly family plan fee.
7. Paperless-ngx – best document archive
Paperless-ngx turns a NAS into the searchable archive for every bill, tax return, medical record, and warranty PDF that used to live in a filing cabinet. Drop a scanned PDF into a watched folder and the OCR pipeline extracts text, tags by correspondent and document type, and files it against the year. Search across years of documents takes under a second once the index is built. Full-text search works in every language the Tesseract data pack supports.
Where it falls short: The consumption folder workflow needs a working network scanner setup, and the initial rule tuning pays off long-term. First-run OCR on a large backlog is CPU-heavy for a few hours.
Pricing:
- Free, open-source
Platforms: Linux, Docker. Ships in the Synology, Unraid, and TrueNAS app catalogues. Mobile apps (Paperless Mobile on Android, Paperless Share on iOS) round out the workflow.
Download: Paperless-ngx
Bottom line: The pick if there is a physical filing cabinet you would like to retire this year.
8. Uptime Kuma – best self-hosted uptime monitor
Uptime Kuma is the local answer to Uptime Robot and Pingdom. Point it at the URLs, ports, DNS records, and Docker containers you care about, and it pings them on your schedule. Notifications route to email, Discord, Slack, ntfy, Telegram, and roughly ninety other channels. Public status pages ship in the same install, so a household that shares Jellyfin and Nextcloud can see at a glance whether the NAS is reachable.
Where it falls short: Distributed monitoring across geographic regions needs a second Uptime Kuma running elsewhere or a paid third-party service. The status pages are functional rather than polished.
Pricing:
- Free, open-source
Platforms: Linux, Docker.
Download: Uptime Kuma
Bottom line: The pick to install last, so the rest of the stack has a watchdog before the family notices something is down.
How to pick the right one
If you want the single biggest subscription saver: Nextcloud plus Immich. Together they cover Dropbox, Google Drive, and Google Photos for the whole household, and the combined bill from the cloud versions is usually enough to justify the NAS on its own.
If the household budget is the driver: Jellyfin plus Pi-hole. Streaming and network-wide ad blocking with zero recurring cost, and both are visible improvements the rest of the family will notice.
If smart-home privacy is the reason you bought the NAS: Home Assistant is the anchor. Add Vaultwarden alongside it and you have moved the two most vendor-locked services in the house in-house.
If the filing cabinet by the desk is the source of stress: Paperless-ngx first. Point a network scanner at the consumption folder, feed it the backlog on a weekend, and the paper problem quietly goes away.
If you already run three or four of these: Uptime Kuma is the tenth-birthday cake. It watches the rest so you find out about a dead container before anyone else does.
FAQ
How much RAM does a NAS need to run all 8? Nextcloud is the largest at roughly 512MB after warm-up. Immich reaches 2GB when the machine-learning worker is indexing. Jellyfin peaks around 500MB during a transcode. Everything else sits under 200MB idle. An 8GB NAS handles the full stack with headroom; 16GB is the sweet spot if you also want ZFS with a decent ARC.
Do these apps work on Synology? All eight. Synology’s Container Manager runs the official Docker images for every app on this list. Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, and Home Assistant also have community-maintained native packages via SynoCommunity if you would rather skip Docker for those.
Do I need Docker to self-host these? For seven of the eight, Docker is the path of least resistance. Home Assistant can also run as its own dedicated OS on a small mini-PC or Raspberry Pi with a wider add-on catalogue. Everything else is easier to update, back up, and roll back when it lives in a container with a named volume.
How do you back up the self-hosted services themselves? Snapshot the app-data directory nightly, replicate it off-box (to another NAS, a cloud bucket like Backblaze B2, or an external drive on rotation), and test the restore once a quarter. Nextcloud and Vaultwarden both ship documented backup CLI commands worth wiring into a cron job.
Can these apps really replace Google Photos, Dropbox, and Netflix at the same time? Yes, and that is the point of running them together. Nextcloud replaces Dropbox and Google Drive. Immich replaces Google Photos. Jellyfin replaces Netflix and Disney+ for content you already own. Adding Vaultwarden also displaces 1Password or the Bitwarden hosted plan. The combined savings usually cover the NAS drives inside a year.
Is self-hosting genuinely more private than the cloud versions? Only if you set up TLS properly, keep the underlying OS patched, and avoid exposing admin ports to the public internet. Self-hosting shifts the trust boundary from the vendor to your own operational discipline. Fronting everything with a Tailscale or WireGuard tunnel instead of public port forwards is the shortcut that makes the privacy claim genuine.
