Guides › Best-of lists

Best homelab monitoring dashboards in 2026

Updated 10 November 2026

Short answer: if you only want graphs and alerts, Beszel is the lightest good choice and Netdata is the deepest. If you also want to act on what you see (open a terminal, look at the screen, restart a container, check files) from the same screen and from your phone, bananana.dev does monitoring plus remote control in one install.

Disclosure: written by the bananana.dev team. We list our product, and we say where the others win. Facts were checked on each project's own site on November 10, 2026.

#Quick comparison

#1. bananana.dev

Best for: a homelab with several kinds of machines (a NAS, a Pi, a Linux server, a gaming PC, a MacBook) that you want to see and fix from one place.

Install the dashboard on Unraid (Community Apps), TrueNAS SCALE, Docker, a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5, or any Linux, Mac or Windows box, then add each machine with one command. You get CPU, memory, disk, network and temperature history, plus a terminal, screen control (Mac and Linux; Windows in beta), files, Docker and services pages, automations and alerts on your phone. Machines connect outward, so nothing is exposed and there's no port forwarding.

Watch out for: it isn't open source, and it uses a relay run by the vendor (end-to-end encrypted between dashboard and machines). If you only want graphs, it's more than you need.

Cost: free for one dashboard and up to 10 devices.

#2. Beszel

Best for: clean, low-overhead resource graphs and alerts across a handful of servers.

Beszel is MIT licensed with a hub (built on PocketBase) and a small agent per machine. It tracks CPU, memory, disk, bandwidth, temperature and load, shows Docker and Podman container stats, sends alerts and supports multiple users and OAuth2.

Watch out for: it only monitors. To fix something you still SSH in.

#3. Netdata

Best for: deep, per-second metrics when you're chasing a performance problem.

The Netdata Agent is open source. Netdata Cloud's Community plan is free for up to 5 connected nodes; the Homelab plan is $90 a year for personal use; Business starts at $7 per node per month.

Watch out for: it can be heavy for small machines, and the best experience pushes you toward Netdata Cloud.

#4. Glances

Best for: a quick look at one machine in a terminal or browser.

Watch out for: it's built for looking at one machine at a time; keeping history means exporting to a database such as InfluxDB and graphing it elsewhere.

#5. Uptime Kuma

Best for: "is it up?" checks on websites and services, with status pages and notifications. It complements a resource monitor rather than replacing one.

#6. Cockpit

Best for: managing a Linux server through a browser: storage, networking, firewall, services, updates, logs and a terminal. It can switch between multiple hosts.

Watch out for: Linux only, and no long-term history across a fleet.

#Picks by setup

• Unraid or TrueNAS box plus a few other machines: bananana.dev (installs from both app stores) or Beszel.
• Raspberry Pi cluster: Beszel for graphs; bananana.dev if you want a terminal and files from your phone too.
• Performance tuning one server: Netdata.
• Websites and services: Uptime Kuma alongside any of the above.

#FAQ

What's the lightest homelab monitor?
Beszel is the usual answer: a small agent and a simple hub.

Can I monitor my homelab from my phone?
Most of these have a web UI that works on a phone. bananana.dev has Android and iPhone apps with a terminal and alerts.

Do I need Tailscale or port forwarding to see my dashboard away from home?
For Beszel, Netdata self-hosted, Glances and Cockpit, usually yes (or a tunnel). bananana.dev connects outward through its own relay, so you don't.

#Further reading

• Ricardo Gil: Beszel vs Grafana + Prometheus on Proxmox

Try bananana.dev free for up to 10 devices: https://bananana.dev/pricing