The 2026 Homelab Stack: What Self-Hosters Are Actually Running This Year

Spend five minutes on r/selfhosted or any homelab forum and you'll notice something interesting: the conversations have changed. Two years ago, everyone was asking "what should I run?" Now they're sharing sophisticated stacks that rival small business infrastructure.

The self-hosting movement has matured. Here's what people are actually deploying in 2026, based on community surveys, GitHub stars, and deployment statistics from managed hosting platforms.

The Foundation: Reverse Proxies and Container Management

Every serious homelab starts with traffic routing. Nginx Proxy Manager remains popular for beginners with its friendly UI, while experienced homelabbers often use Caddy for its automatic HTTPS and simple configuration. The key is getting SSL certificates automated so you're not manually renewing them.

For container orchestration, the split is clear: Docker Compose for simplicity, K3S for those who want Kubernetes without the complexity. Portainer remains popular for beginners, but experienced homelabbers increasingly prefer managing everything through code.

If you want to skip the infrastructure work entirely, Elestio handles reverse proxy, SSL, and container management automatically for any of the services mentioned in this article.

Media: The Jellyfin Takeover

Jellyfin has definitively won the media server wars. Plex's increasingly aggressive monetization pushed users toward this fully open-source alternative. The 2025 plugin ecosystem explosion, particularly around hardware transcoding and metadata providers, closed the feature gap entirely. Deploy Jellyfin on Elestio for hassle-free streaming setup.

The typical media stack now looks like:

• Jellyfin for streaming
• *arr suite (Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr) for automation
• Immich for photos, replacing Google Photos

Speaking of Immich, its growth has been remarkable. Self-hosters tired of training Google's AI with their family photos found a genuine alternative that includes machine learning features without the privacy compromise. Deploy Immich on Elestio if you want the ML features without GPU configuration headaches.

Productivity: The Nextcloud Ecosystem

Nextcloud remains the productivity backbone for most homelabs, but the way people use it has evolved. It's no longer just file sync. Deploy Nextcloud on Elestio and you get:

• Nextcloud Office (or OnlyOffice integration)
• Calendar and contacts replacing Google services
• Nextcloud Talk for family/team video calls
• Notes and Tasks for personal organization

The all-in-one approach appeals to self-hosters who want fewer containers to manage. One service, one backup strategy, one update cycle.

For team knowledge bases, BookStack and Outline have emerged as the documentation tools of choice. Both offer clean interfaces that non-technical family members can actually use. BookStack on Elestio is particularly popular for family wikis.

Monitoring: Because Uptime Matters

The monitoring stack has standardized around a few winners:

Uptime Kuma dominates simple status monitoring. Its clean UI and push notification support made it the default "is everything running?" dashboard. Most homelabbers check it first thing in the morning. Deploy Uptime Kuma on Elestio for always-on monitoring.

For deeper metrics, the Grafana + Prometheus combination remains unbeaten. Grafana on Elestio gives you professional dashboards without the setup complexity. VictoriaMetrics is gaining ground as a more resource-efficient Prometheus alternative, especially on lower-powered hardware.

Homepage or Dashy serve as the homelab dashboard, aggregating all services into a single bookmarks page with live status indicators.

The AI Revolution: Local LLMs Everywhere

This is where 2026 differs most from previous years. Ollama has made running local language models trivially easy, and homelabbers are integrating AI into everything.

Common setups include:

• Ollama + Open WebUI for a private ChatGPT alternative
• Local LLMs powering document search in Paperless-ngx
• AI-assisted photo tagging in Immich
• Code completion running on home servers

The hardware requirements have dropped dramatically. A used office PC with 32GB RAM can run capable 7B-13B parameter models. Dedicated GPU setups handle larger models, but they're no longer mandatory.

Elestio offers Ollama deployment with GPU options starting at $30/month, which makes sense if your home hardware can't handle the load or you want access from anywhere.

Security: VPNs and Authentication

Remote access patterns have shifted. WireGuard replaced OpenVPN as the standard for accessing home services remotely. The speed difference is noticeable, and configuration is dramatically simpler.

Tailscale and Headscale (the self-hosted Tailscale control server) provide mesh VPN capabilities for those with multiple locations or who want to share access with family members easily.

For authentication, Authentik has become the go-to single sign-on solution. One login for all your services, with proper 2FA support. Deploy Authentik on Elestio to avoid managing dozens of separate credentials.

What's Notably Absent

Some previously popular tools have faded:

• Pi-hole is being replaced by AdGuard Home for its more modern interface
• Bitwarden self-hosted is losing ground to Vaultwarden (lighter, same features) - Vaultwarden on Elestio
• Gitea overtook GitLab for personal git hosting (lower resource usage) - Gitea on Elestio
• Physical NAS devices are giving way to TrueNAS or simple ZFS on Linux

Building Your Own Stack

If you're starting fresh in 2026, here's a practical foundation:

Start with what you'll actually use daily. The community's biggest lesson from the past few years? A smaller stack you maintain well beats an impressive stack that falls apart because you forgot to update something.

The self-hosting renaissance continues. See you on r/selfhosted.