HomeioumbrelOS is a polished appliance: flash it, and it owns the disk. That is a good trade on dedicated hardware and an awkward one on a box that already runs Linux. Homeio installs on Debian, Ubuntu or Raspberry Pi OS, uses plain Compose apps, and manages the host as well as the apps.
| Need | In Homeio |
|---|---|
| Keep the OS you have | Runs on Debian, Ubuntu or Raspberry Pi OS, x86_64 or ARM64. apt, SSH and your other services stay where they are. umbrelOS: a full OS image for Umbrel Home, Raspberry Pi 5 or x86. |
| Apps you can take elsewhere | Each app is a compose file you can open in the built-in editor and run on any Docker host. Umbrel apps depend on umbrelOS's app proxy and manifest. |
| Add something not in the store | Paste a compose file, or a docker run command that Homeio converts to Compose. Add other CasaOS-format catalogs as extra store sources. Umbrel supports community app stores in its own format. |
| Manage the machine | Partition, format and mount disks; share folders over Samba; mount SMB shares; switch Wi-Fi networks. All without SSH. umbrelOS 2.0 manages its own drives, shares and network settings, but the OS is closed to anything it did not install. |
| Recurring jobs | Cron-scheduled app restarts, image pulls, backups and scripts. A failed run raises a notification. |
| Share one app with family | Publish it through Cloudflare Tunnel on your own domain. Homeio writes the DNS record and the ingress rule. |
| Polish and hardware | Homeio is a younger project, and it sells no hardware. Umbrel is ahead here, and Umbrel Home is a well-made box. |
| Bitcoin and Lightning | The default catalog has no Bitcoin or Lightning apps. You would bring your own compose files. Umbrel's strongest category. Pick Umbrel for a node. |
umbrelOS is an operating system. You flash it to an Umbrel Home, a Raspberry Pi 5 or an x86 machine, and it owns the disk. Homeio is an application that installs on the Debian, Ubuntu or Raspberry Pi OS you already run, so the box can keep doing other jobs and you keep apt, SSH and your own services.
Underneath, yes, but they are written for umbrelOS: they rely on its app proxy, its environment variables and an umbrel-app.yml manifest, so you cannot take one to a plain Docker host as it is. Homeio's apps are ordinary compose files from the CasaOS app store format, and you can paste your own compose file or a docker run command to add an app that is not in the catalog.
If you want an appliance you never have to think about, especially on Umbrel Home hardware, or if you are running a Bitcoin or Lightning node, where Umbrel's catalog is far deeper. Its interface is also more polished than Homeio's. Homeio is the better fit if the machine already runs Linux you want to keep, or you want the host itself managed from the same place.
Homeio is open source under the AGPL-3.0. umbrelOS publishes its source under the PolyForm Noncommercial licence, which lets you read and modify it but restricts commercial use, so it is source-available rather than open source in the OSI sense. For a home server that rarely matters in practice; it matters if you want to build on it.
It partitions, formats and mounts disks, shares folders over Samba and mounts SMB shares from other machines, manages Wi-Fi and Ethernet through NetworkManager, and runs scheduled tasks and weekly backups. umbrelOS 2.0 covers its own disks, sharing and networking in Settings too, but only for itself: you cannot install host packages or run other services next to it, which is the point of an appliance.
Yes. Tailscale is set up from Settings → Integrations, which is the right route for the dashboard itself. Since 1.9 you can also publish individual apps through Cloudflare Tunnel: Homeio creates the DNS record and the ingress rule through the Cloudflare API.
Since 1.9.5, one anonymous ping twice a day: a random instance ID, the Homeio version, the CPU architecture and the OS. No IP, usernames, file paths or app names are stored, and the totals are public at homeio.app/stats. Settings or HOMEIO_TELEMETRY=false turns it off.
A 64-bit Linux machine, x86_64 or ARM64. A Raspberry Pi 4 or 5, an N100 mini PC or an old desktop are all typical. Homeio itself runs Node and PostgreSQL; the Docker install caps it at 1 GB, and 4 GB of RAM leaves room for a few apps.
curl -fsSL https://get.homeio.app | sudo bash on Debian, Ubuntu or Raspberry Pi OS, which serves the UI on port 80. Or docker compose up -d from a clone of the repository, which serves it on 12026. The first account you create is the only one.
The demo needs no install. On a spare machine or a VM, the Docker install takes a few minutes and listens on port 12026, so it does not fight your current setup for port 80.