Dashy vs Fenrus
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted dashboards & startpages options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Fenrus
Personal home page with smart app widgets
| Feature | Dashy | Fenrus |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | ≈5-minute setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 97 · Excellent | 63 · Good |
| Category | Dashboards & Startpages | Dashboards & Startpages |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Language | Vue | JavaScript |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker | docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 26,552 | ★ 790 |
| First released | 2021 | 2022 |
| Replaces | Heimdall | Heimdall |
What are Dashy and Fenrus?
Dashy
Dashy is a highly configurable personal dashboard with status checks, widgets, themes, and authentication. It targets home labbers who want a feature-packed start page. It is deployed via Docker.
- Status checking for services
- Many widgets and themes
- Optional authentication
- Cloud backup option
Fenrus
Fenrus is a personal home page and dashboard for organizing applications with live widgets and per-user dashboards. It targets households wanting individual customized start pages. It is deployed via Docker.
- Per-user dashboards
- Smart app widgets
- Built-in search engines
- Guest and personal modes
Dashy vs Fenrus: key differences
Dashy is written in Vue, while Fenrus is built with JavaScript. Licensing differs — MIT for Dashy versus GPL-2.0 for Fenrus. Dashy has the considerably larger community, at 26,552 GitHub stars versus 790.
Why pick each one
Choose Dashy if…
- Very feature-rich
- Lots of themes
- Built-in status checks
Watch out for
- Many options to configure
- Slower recent development
Choose Fenrus if…
- Multi-user dashboards
- Live app data
- Simple to run
Watch out for
- Smaller community
- Fewer integrations
Frequently asked questions
Is Dashy or Fenrus better?
Neither is universally better. Dashy has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Dashy and Fenrus free and open-source?
Yes. Dashy is licensed under MIT and Fenrus under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Dashy and Fenrus with Docker?
Dashy: yes. Fenrus: yes.