umbrelOS: Home server OS with a polished app store
A Raspberry Pi, a mini PC or a spare desktop plus umbrelOS makes a home cloud with a browser dashboard and a one-click app store, free for personal use.
Is umbrelOS right for you?
Pros
- Free for personal use, with every update included
- Disk images for Raspberry Pi 5, Pi 4, Intel and AMD PCs, plus a VM option
- FailSafe mode keeps a copy of your data on a second drive
Cons
- Source is public but not open source: free for personal use only
- Runs apps only; no virtual machines (full guest operating systems)
- FailSafe needs drives of the same size
Choose umbrelOS ifYou want a home cloud on a Pi or mini PC with a slick app store and no licence fee.
Compare with other NAS OS
See how umbrelOS differs on storage, licensing and what it runs on.
| Spec | umbrelOS | Unraid | TrueNAS | HexOS | ZimaOS | openmediavault | FygoOS | MOS | CasaOS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | A Pi or mini PC that runs apps from a clean dashboard | Growing a pool from mismatched drives | Data integrity, snapshots and replication | TrueNAS without the learning curve | Simple app hosting with little setup | Low-power ARM boards and old PCs | Photo backup and file sharing with little setup | Unraid-style storage without a licence fee | Adding an app store to a Linux machine you already run |
| Price | Free for personal use | From $49 | Free | $199 lifetime | Free, $29 Plus | Free | Free, $199 lifetime | Free | Free |
| Licence | PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 | Proprietary | GPL-3.0 / LGPL-3.0 | Proprietary | Proprietary | GPL-3.0 | Proprietary | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Based on | Debian | Slackware | Debian | TrueNAS | Buildroot | Debian | Linux | Devuan | Debian, Ubuntu or Raspberry Pi OS |
| Apps | One-click store (Docker) | Community Apps (Docker) | TrueNAS Apps (Docker) | Curated one-click apps | One-click store (Docker) | Docker Compose plugin | App Center and Docker | MOS Hub (Docker templates), LXC | One-click store (Docker) |
| Boots from | USB / SSD / NVMe | USB / SSD / NVMe | SSD / NVMe | SSD / NVMe | SSD / NVMe | USB / SSD / NVMe | SSD / NVMe | USB / SSD / NVMe | Whatever the host OS uses |
| Storage | ZFS (FailSafe mirrors or RAIDZ1) | Parity array or ZFS | ZFS | ZFS | RAID, ZFS or JBOD | RAID, mergerfs, SnapRAID | ext4, Btrfs or ZFS | XFS, Btrfs, mergerfs, SnapRAID, parity array | Host filesystem |
| Mixed drive sizes | Yes, pooled without redundancy | Yes | Each vdev uses its smallest drive | Each vdev uses its smallest drive | Via JBOD, without redundancy | With mergerfs | Not documented | Yes | Yes, each drive stays separate |
| Virtual machines | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes (ZVM) | Via plugin (KVM) | Yes (best on x86) | Yes (QEMU/KVM) | No |
| Architecture | x86 and ARM | x86 only | x86 only | x86 only | x86 only | x86 and ARM | x86 and ARM | x86 and ARM | x86 and ARM |
| Min hardware | Raspberry Pi 4 or an x86 PC | 4 GB RAM | 8 GB RAM | 8 GB RAM | 4 GB RAM | 1 GB RAM | 2 GB RAM | 4 GB RAM | Raspberry Pi, NUC or ZimaBoard |
Runs on
Hardware from the directory that umbrelOS installs on. On a NAS it replaces the vendor's own system, so check the warranty terms first.
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