sist2 — Self-Hosted, Open-Source

Features

• Fast, low memory usage, multi-threaded
• Manage & schedule scan jobs with simple web interface (Docker only)
• Mobile-friendly Web interface
• Extracts text and metadata from common file types \*
• Generates thumbnails \*
• Incremental scanning
• Manual tagging from the UI and automatic tagging based on file attributes via user scripts
• Recursive scan inside archive files \*\*
• OCR support with tesseract \*\*\*
• Stats page & disk utilisation visualization

Installation

services: elasticsearch: image: elasticsearch:7.17.9 restart: unless-stopped volumes: # This directory must have 1000:1000 permissions (or update PUID & PGID below) - /data/sist2-es-data/:/usr/share/elasticsearch/data environment: - "discovery.type=single-node" - "ES_JAVA_OPTS=-Xms2g -Xmx2g" - "PUID=1000" - "PGID=1000" sist2-admin: image: sist2app/sist2:x64-linux restart: unless-stopped volumes: - /data/sist2-admin-data/:/sist2-admin/ - /<path to index>/:/host ports: - 4090:4090 # NOTE: Don't expose this port publicly! - 8080:8080 working_dir: /root/sist2-admin/ entrypoint: python3 command: - /root/sist2-admin/sist2_admin/app.py

Why self-host sist2

Self-hosting gives you three things SaaS can’t: data ownership (the files live on disks you control), cost predictability (a one-time setup vs. recurring per-seat fees that grow with your household or team), and longevity (open-source means the app keeps working even if the maintainers move on, since you can pin a working version). The trade-off is that you take on the operational work of running a server, applying updates, and handling backups.

Hardware notes

Memory footprint | ~20MB | >500MB |

Where to go from here

• Browse the full self-hosted app directory
• Compare self-hosted alternatives side-by-side
• DevOps roadmap — learn the skills to run your own server