Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?

DHH's "AI shed" idea got me thinking about getting a small $5–10/month VPS.

I'm a Linux guy and have on many points of my life have a personal server. So I like the idea of having something always on, but I’m not sure the maintenance is worth it when most things can just run on my laptop.

That said, I tend to do things myself and only later realize I could have automated or delegated them, so I may have a blind spot here.

If you have a cheap VPS or mini PC, what actually ended up being useful long-term? Anything that saved enough time or replaced enough subscriptions to justify keeping it around?

35 points | by mariocesar 1 day ago

29 comments

  • ehe78qhe 1 day ago
    On my home server (just an older desktop PC)

    - qBittorrent for "Linux ISOs"

    - Jellyfin so I can watch/read/listen to my "Linux ISOs"

    - Tailscale so me, my family and friends can watch/read/listen to my "Linux ISOs" from anywhere in the world

    - Self hosting my photo albums. Immich is a handy choice for this. Very useful for personal photos you don't want to trust to strange tech companies.

    - Gitea for self-hosting git repos for some personal projects I have not open-sourced.

    [-]
    • jotato 18 hours ago
      I picked up a new hobby of buying Linux ISOs from thrift stores. I usually get them for $1/each. Up to 300 now - all mine. Jellyfin is great to organize them
      [-]
      • ehe78qhe 18 hours ago
        I have some Linux ISOs I ripped myself, but it can be especially hard to find older ISOs from other countries - you usually can't find them on normal websites. It's really nice to have them on my own server and not worry about them disappearing someday.
    • 7bit 20 hours ago
      How many Linux ISOs are stored on your $5 VPS? One?
      [-]
      • ehe78qhe 18 hours ago
        Like I said, this is on an old desktop PC that I shoved some spare SSDs into. I have a few thousand Linux ISOs on there. I have an rclone job running regular encrypted offsite backups as well, so that my Linux ISOs are safe from hardware issues.
    • paulcole 12 hours ago
      I mean just say you’re pirating…
      [-]
      • ehe78qhe 11 hours ago
        Whaaaaaat? That's illegal! I'm just an OS enthusiast!
  • mattfrommars 1 day ago
    I repurposed my old macbook pro from 2013 as dedicated Proxmox machine. I run all short of application on it - mostly pulled from https://community-scripts.org/. Along this, I use free tier of Oracle VM to funnel traffic to my box and use that as reverse proxy appliance. Thee isn't a real need to pay $5-$10 for a VPS if you have old machine lying around and use AI to help you configure it. I gave my setup using whichever LLM model I want to use at that day full access via SSH keys.
  • jbarberu 1 day ago
    I recently closed down a VPS I had been running for the last 10 years. Mostly used it for hosting a personal website and some smaller other static sites, as well as git repo backups.

    After getting into home assistant and setting up a proper home server I no longer saw a need to keep the VPS running. With cloudflare reverse proxy I can still host personal websites, but from inside my home network. Since getting the home server I'm discovering a lot of neat self hosted options and use it a lot more than I ever did the VPS. If nothing else, hosting your own stuff provides a great place to learn and explore. It doesn't have to be always on/on the internet for that to be true though.

  • sebnun 1 day ago
    I run a language learning app* on a single VPS, for free. I'm not sure if you can still get it, but Oracle used to offer very generous VPS for free. I have a 4 CPUs, 24 GB memory VPS that I'm using for several things, including running the backend and the marketing site for that app.

    I installed Plex but ended up not using it, so I removed it.

    * https://www.langturbo.com

  • runjake 16 hours ago
    My own vibe-coded replacements for services that I formerly paid a subscription for, for services that need the best latency or uptimes. Also, I have a couple physical Linux boxes with other services running for stuff less latency sensitive or that require much more RAM and storage.

    Caveat: almost all of them only listen on a Tailscale network interface, so they are not directly exposed to the Internet.

  • jdboyd 1 day ago
    Here are a few things I do: Host static content behind nginx Run filestash as a partial GoogleDrive replacement (I use it for sharing files with other people, like deliverables), files place on an S3 compatible object store. Run vaultwarder for myself and some family members. Run a container registry service backed by an s3 compatible object store. Run a django web application I wrote for my own use. However, it stores to postgresql running in a different VPS. Run caddy for ssl termination and reverse proxying the other services running here. Redis (I forget if that was for filestash or the container registry, but can be configured to be very light weight).

    All of those are in different containers running through podman.

  • scottydelta 22 hours ago
    I developed tarvis.io which is being used by friends and family to self host notion alternative and run hermes agents. This let's them run self hosted apps as actual apps without having to worry about the server or setups.

    One friend was running a gitlab runner on a laptop but moved to tarvis given how easy it is. Tarvis has a catalog of 750 apps already so I am sure you can find a few things from there to run 24/7.

    IMO being able to see all the apps in a catalog and being able to easily add that app and experiment helped me figure out which apps I should be running.

  • spcebar 11 hours ago
    Fun little single serve websites and side projects. Built a little graffiti wall a few years back which runs on my VPS and requires basically no attention.
  • grugdev42 1 day ago
    * Mirror my Github repos (in case GH goes down or closes my account) * Serve my small website (just HTML files using Nginx) * Monitor other applications (and hits a URL when they fail) * Occasionally use it as a WeTransfer alternative (just uploading files into the WWW directory with an obscure name)
  • spl757 1 day ago
    dns and email server. i just make aliases that point to a single imap account that is unique for everything i sign up for. if i start to get spam, turn off the alias. it also lets me see who is selling my info or has been hacked when bestbuy@example.com starts getting emails from russia.
    [-]
    • qup 1 hour ago
      I've been doing this for over a decade, and I've never had one turn to spam yet.

      I do think about it sometimes when databases leak, though.

    • Sha1rholder 18 hours ago
      Deploy email server on a vps is super risky and troublesome
      [-]
      • spl757 13 hours ago
        I've built email servers that sent 15 million emails a day into all of the major inbox providers, so you could say I know a thing or two about it. This wasn't spam, it was legit doubple-opt in.

        It depends on your use case, and ability to actually administrate it properly.

      • jletts 15 hours ago
        It can vary, I did it for a few years with no issues or deliverability problems
      • 7bit 16 hours ago
        Lol no and no
  • onel 1 day ago
    I keep moose os instance on a vps, for immich, cap (recordings), cal for meetings and one app for notes. Small productivity apps that I just like to have access to everywhere.
  • jotato 18 hours ago
    Mine aren't technically VPSs but I have two mini pc.

    - Jellyfin

    - Audiobook shelf

    - Immich

    - ChangeDetection (for monitoring when something is back in stock)

    - Minecraft server for my kids

    - Several apps I have for my own use

    - HomeAssistant

    - Hermes

  • slipwalker 19 hours ago
    openresty with several half-done micro-saas, written in golang with sqlite3 storage.

    ( my post-factum inspiration: https://stevehanov.ca/blog/how-i-run-multiple-10k-mrr-compan... )

  • neverminder 23 hours ago
    Seedbox. With 5TB storage attached. Glory to Hetzner.
    [-]
    • 01arjuna 19 hours ago
      Don't ever give it up, it won't be $5 anymore.
  • andOlga 18 hours ago
    Exit node for friends in countries with internet censorship. Specific use case, but it is mine.
  • ogou 1 day ago
    Messaging queues and brokers. RabbitMQ, BullMQ, etc. Simple services, but I've learned to keep them on their own images so they recover fast and don't compete with other resources.
  • dare944 1 day ago
    Mail / IMAP server for my family domain. Small web server with a few static content sites. Trillium notes server.

    Pretty low maintenance overall - I can go months without even thinking about it.

  • Sha1rholder 1 day ago
    Deploy a vpn
  • Kim_Bruning 1 day ago
    Right this minute I've got wireguard and caddy up.
  • cutthegrass2 1 day ago
    a container image with a wireguard server plus a bunch of host configuration scripts to automate the setup.

    Handy to have a non commercial VPN solution you can deploy in any region.

  • 1vuio0pswjnm7 1 day ago
    1. Authoritative DNS server

    2. Rendezvous server ("supernode")

  • fragmede 11 hours ago
    Factorio server
  • browningstreet 1 day ago
    Hermes and an Orca dev server
  • mikewarot 1 day ago
    I've seen too many chat services go away, or behind a paywall, so I vibe-coded my own chat and use the VPS to host the hole-punching infrastructure, because I and my friend who I wish to chat with are both behind NAT.

    The price was low enough that I left it running.

  • phs318u 1 day ago
    NetBird on the VPS.

    Proxmox VE with various guests (PeaNUT, Gitea, Ntfy, n8n, AI inference, agents) running across 3 servers (total >300GB RAM, 6TB SSD storage), with a separate Proxmox Backup server.

  • rainymoon 1 hour ago
    [dead]
  • billgates666 17 hours ago
    [dead]
  • Computer0 1 day ago
    [flagged]