# Privacy

SearXNG is the AGPL-3.0 metasearch engine with 33,000+ stars that queries up to 262 upstream engines without tracking you. Here's how it works, the self-host vs public instance trade-off, the real costs, and why upstream blocking is the one problem you can't configure away.

Meilisearch is the MIT-licensed, Rust-built search engine with 55,000+ stars that ships typo tolerance and sub-50ms results out of the box. Here's why it feels instant, what it really costs, and where its scaling ceiling sits.

Paperless NGX is the GPL-3.0 document management system with 45,000+ stars that OCRs, classifies, and indexes your paperwork entirely on your own hardware. Here's the v3.1.0 pipeline, the real costs, and the clear-text storage trade-off you must plan around.

Frigate is the MIT-licensed, self-hosted NVR with 31,000+ stars that does real-time AI object detection entirely on your own hardware. Here's how the two-stage pipeline works, what hardware you actually need, the real costs, and the privacy responsibilities that come with it.

changedetection.io is the Apache-2.0, self-hosted web page change monitor with 33,000+ stars. Here's how it works, why your watchlist is a privacy liability on hosted services, the real costs, and the security defaults you must fix before exposing it.

Headscale is the BSD-3-Clause, self-hosted implementation of the Tailscale control server with 41,000+ stars. Here's how it works, what it really costs, where your network metadata lands, and why the maintainers actively discourage running it in Docker.

RustDesk is the AGPL-3.0 remote desktop with 113,000+ stars that replaces TeamViewer and AnyDesk by letting you self-host the relay. Here's how it works, what the Pro tier really gates, where your screen data lands, and the AGPL trap to know before you embed it.

Home Assistant is the local-first, Apache-2.0 smart-home hub with 2,000+ integrations and 90,000+ stars. Here's how it works, what it really costs to run, where your data lands, and who should (and shouldn't) self-host it.

OpenHuman is a GPL-3.0 desktop AI agent that builds a local 'memory tree' of your work — up to 1B tokens stored encrypted on your machine, 118 OAuth integrations, and an 80% token-compression trick. It hit #1 on GitHub Trending in July 2026. A 5,000-word dive into the architecture, the privacy model, the cost, and where your data goes.