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Dashboards & Startpages

Organize every service behind one screen with self-hosted homelab dashboards and startpages.

48 self-hosted apps · 97 comparisons

All dashboards & startpages apps

Last reviewed Aug 26, 2026 · 423 words

Homer can give you a working startpage in the time it takes to write one YAML file: a static page of links to your services, 64 MB of RAM, nothing to break. That is one end of this category. The other end is a full container control panel, and the biggest source of confusion here is that both ends get called "dashboards". Decide which one you are shopping for before comparing anything.

How to choose your homelab front door

Startpages (Homepage, Homer, Glance, Dashy) are the page your browser opens to: links, status dots, maybe widgets. Control panels (Portainer CE, Dockge, CasaOS) manage the containers themselves: deploying, restarting, reading logs. Within the startpages, two axes matter. Static links versus live data: Homer renders links and nothing else, while Homepage pulls live stats from hundreds of services and Glance aggregates RSS, weather, and calendars into an information-dense page. And config style: Homepage, Homer, and Glance are all YAML-file-configured with no web editor, which is a feature if your homelab lives in a Git repo and a nuisance if you wanted to click.

Where to start

Homepage is the strongest all-rounder: 128 MB, fast, with Docker auto-discovery that finds your containers via labels and hundreds of service widgets that show download queues, disk usage, and request counts inline. Glance wins if what you actually want is a morning page, feeds, weather, markets, and service status on one screen, though it is a young project (first released 2024). Homer wins on pure simplicity: static assets you could serve from any web server, ideal when links are genuinely all you need.

One page cannot do both jobs

The recurring mistake is expecting a startpage to manage containers or a control panel to be a pleasant homepage. Portainer is excellent at stacks, volumes, and role-based access and mediocre as the page you stare at daily; Homepage is the reverse. The stable pattern in most homelabs is one of each: a startpage as the front door, Portainer or Dockge behind it as the engine room, one link away.

For a first-timer the default is Homepage: the YAML is approachable, Docker discovery means your services appear with two labels per container, and it grows with the lab. Start with a plain list of links, add widgets the week you notice yourself wanting them, and keep the config in version control from day one, since that file quietly becomes the map of everything you run.

Curated picks

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Dashboards & Startpages comparisons

97 head-to-head comparisons in this category.