Homebox

Last reviewed Sep 13, 2026 · 832 words

Homebox gets filed under dashboards on a lot of lists, and that is the first thing to get straight: it will not show you whether Jellyfin is up or link to your Pi-hole admin page. It is a home inventory database. You record what you own, where it lives, what it cost and when the warranty runs out, and it shows you a summary page of all that. If you came here for service tiles, Homepage or Homarr are what you want. If you came here because a burst pipe or an insurance renewal made you realise you have no idea what is in your garage, keep reading.

One container, one SQLite file, 128 MB

Homebox is a Go binary with a bundled web UI and a SQLite database. The whole deployment is one service:

services:
  homebox:
    image: ghcr.io/sysadminsmedia/homebox:latest
    ports:
      - "7745:7745"
    volumes:
      - ./homebox-data:/data
    environment:
      - HBOX_LOG_LEVEL=info
      - HBOX_OPTIONS_ALLOW_REGISTRATION=true
    restart: unless-stopped

It listens on 7745, idles well under the 128 MB the listing quotes, and starts in about a second on anything. Register your first account, then set HBOX_OPTIONS_ALLOW_REGISTRATION=false and restart, the same routine as any small multi-user app. There is no Postgres option and no need for one: a household inventory is a few thousand rows at most, and SQLite handles that with room to spare. Backup is a copy of /data while the container is stopped, or an sqlite3 .backup if you want it live.

The data model is the product

Items, locations, labels. Locations nest (House, then Garage, then Shelf 3), labels are flat tags, and each item carries purchase price, purchase date, serial number, model number, warranty expiry, notes, attachments (receipts and manuals as PDF or photos) and a maintenance log. That maintenance log is the underrated feature: recording "replaced furnace filter, 18 dollars" against the furnace turns Homebox into the household service history nobody otherwise keeps. QR label printing is built in, so you can tag storage bins and scan straight to a bin's contents from a phone.

What it does not model is consumables and stock levels. If you want to know you have 3 tins of tomatoes left, that is Grocy, which is built around quantities and expiry dates. Homebox items are individual things, not counts of things.

Import a CSV first, then decide if you like it

The fastest way to evaluate Homebox is the CSV import. Build a spreadsheet with the columns the docs specify (name, location, labels, quantity, purchase price and so on), import it, and you have a populated instance in 10 minutes rather than an afternoon of clicking. Two traps: the importer creates locations and labels from the text you give it, so "Garage" and "garage" become two locations; and it is additive, so running it twice duplicates every item. Clean the sheet before the first run and do not run it twice.

Export is CSV as well, which settles the exit question. Everything you type in comes back out as a flat file, plus the attachments directory on disk. You are not locked in.

Reporting is where the dashboard claim wears thin

The home page shows total items, total value, counts per location and per label, and recent activity. That is the entire reporting surface. There is no depreciation schedule, no per-room valuation chart, and no "warranties expiring in the next 90 days" view beyond sorting the items table by that column. For insurance it is enough: total declared value plus a folder of receipts is what an adjuster asks for. For an asset register with audit trails, check-out and check-in, and depreciation, the right tool is Snipe-IT, which is built for IT departments and feels like it, but does the job Homebox does not attempt.

The maintainer change is a plus, not a warning

Homebox was written by one developer and went quiet when he stepped back. The sysadminsmedia fork picked it up, became the canonical repository, and has shipped steadily since: the 7,000-plus stars, the ghcr.io image above and the current docs all belong to that fork. If a tutorial has you pulling ghcr.io/hay-kot/homebox, it is pointing at the archived original. Use the sysadminsmedia image and you are on the maintained line.

What I'd do

Deploy the compose above, import a CSV of the 40 or 50 things you would actually claim on insurance (electronics, tools, bikes, appliances), attach whatever receipts you can find, and set warranty dates on anything under 3 years old. That is a 2-hour job that pays for itself the first time something breaks. Skip it for pantry stock (Grocy) and for anything you need to audit (Snipe-IT), and keep it off your dashboards shortlist, because it is not one. As a Sortly replacement for one household, it is the obvious pick at exactly 0 dollars a month.