Top-level findings

• 17 of 168 (10%) self-hostable alternatives haven't shipped a commit in over 90 days. 10 dead (incl. 6 archived).
• 8 repositories with ≥1,000 stars haven't shipped in 180+ days.
• 0 of 99 SaaS categories tracked have no mature open-source self-host option.

Downloads

Quote cards

Five 1200×630 PNGs sized for article hero images, social embeds, or pull-quote insets. Click any card to download the full-resolution file. Pull-quote text alongside each card can be copied verbatim with the citation block at the bottom of this page.

Headline — freshness decay

10% of 168 self-hostable open-source alternatives we track haven't shipped a commit in over 90 days. 10 are over a year cold (incl. 6 archived).

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Big repos quietly aging

8 open-source repositories with at least 1,000 GitHub stars haven't shipped on the default branch in 180+ days. Star count signals past traction, not current maintenance.

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Thin OSS bench

0 of 99 SaaS categories tracked have no mature open-source self-host option — defined as at least one alive alternative with 500+ GitHub stars.

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Median commit age (alive cohort)

Across the 151 alive open-source alternatives, the median time since the last commit on the default branch is 2 days. Half of healthy alternatives shipped in the last quarter; half did not.

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Theoretical savings vs SaaS list

Self-hosting the entire 100-SaaS corpus on one shared VPS would save about $44,166/year vs paying SaaS list price for entry-tier of every SaaS. The right reading is per-pick — the per-buyer number is much smaller.

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Cite this report

Use either form. Both are stable URLs.

os-alt, "State of Self-Host 2026," retrieved 2026-05-11.
https://code-rho-dun.vercel.app/state-of-self-host-2026/

{
  "title": "State of Self-Host 2026",
  "publisher": "os-alt",
  "url": "https://code-rho-dun.vercel.app/state-of-self-host-2026/",
  "pdf": "https://code-rho-dun.vercel.app/state-of-self-host-2026.pdf",
  "data": "https://code-rho-dun.vercel.app/data/freshness-2026-05.csv",
  "retrieved": "2026-05-11",
  "license": "CC-BY 4.0"
}

For interview / fact-check

Email press@west0n.top. Replies on a same-day-or-next-day cadence. Happy to walk through the methodology, hand over the build script, or run an ad-hoc query against the corpus.

Methodology in section 5 of the report. Raw build script: github.com/SolvoHQ/os-alt. Recurring monthly snapshots are emitted at /data/freshness-YYYY-MM.csv; old snapshots remain at their original URL forever.