HomeBox
$9.00 / month with a 7-day free trial and a $1.00 sign-up fee
Self-hosted home inventory — track every item by location, photo, serial number, warranty, and purchase info, so insurance claims and “where did I put it?” questions stop being painful.
A managed instance of HomeBox on ElfHosted — the actively-maintained continuation of the original Homebox project, rebuilt and led by sysadminsmedia. Track items in nested locations (House → Room → Drawer), attach photos and receipts, log serial numbers / warranties / value, generate QR codes for boxes. AGPL-3.
Two times you wish you'd been logging your stuff: when filing an insurance claim after a fire, and when looking for the warranty on a thing that just broke. HomeBox solves both.
What is HomeBox?
HomeBox is a self-hosted home inventory and organisation system. Items live inside a hierarchical location tree (House → Garage → Tool Cabinet → Top Shelf, or whatever structure fits); each item carries photos, receipts, manuals, serial numbers, purchase date, warranty expiry, and current value. The web UI is clean and mobile-responsive; QR-code generation lets you label physical boxes / shelves / containers with a scannable tag that opens straight to that location's contents.
Two big use cases drive most adoption: insurance documentation (a fire, theft, or flood claim is dramatically less painful with itemised records and photos already on file) and warranty + serial-number tracking (when a thing breaks, the receipt and warranty info are one search away instead of buried in an email archive or a stack of paper).
The project's history matters: HomeBox was originally built by hay-kot and stalled in 2024; sysadminsmedia took over with a hard fork and active development resumed. The instance ElfHosted hosts is the live continuation, not the dead original.
Features
- 📦 Hierarchical locations — nest as deep as you want: House → Garage → Workshop Cabinet → Top Drawer → Small Box. Items belong to a location; locations move (with their contents) intact.
- 📸 Photos & receipts — attach images per item; HomeBox stores them server-side. Useful for insurance claims and for "is that the right model?" recognition.
- 🔖 Serial numbers, manuals, warranties — every item field is searchable. "What's the serial on the dishwasher" → instant answer.
- 📱 QR-code generation — print labels for physical boxes; scan with phone to open the matching location in HomeBox.
- 💰 Value tracking — purchase price, current value, total inventory value. Insurance-ready exports.
- 📅 Warranty expiry alerts — set warranty end dates; HomeBox surfaces upcoming expirations.
- 📥 Bulk CSV import — start fast by bulk-importing existing item lists from Sortly / Encircle / Notion / spreadsheets.
- 📤 Full data export — JSON / CSV; your data is yours, transferable to another tool any time.
- 👥 Multi-user with roles — separate accounts per household member; shared locations and items.
- 🔍 Full-text search — across item names, descriptions, serials, notes, and labels.
- 🏷️ Labels & categories — tag items beyond their location (e.g. "winter clothes" can span multiple closets).
- 🔓 FOSS & AGPL-3 — no premium tier, no per-item caps, no annual fee.
HomeBox vs Other Inventory Options
- vs. Sortly — Sortly is the polished commercial home/business inventory app; per-user / per-item pricing, mobile app, polished UI. Right for businesses with budget. HomeBox is the self-host alternative for households who'd rather pay a flat $9/month than subscribe forever.
- vs. Encircle — Encircle is insurance-focused, often integrated with claims adjusters. Different shape; if your goal is purely insurance documentation and you have an Encircle account through your insurer, that's the path. HomeBox is the BYO version.
- vs. a Google Sheet / Notion database — works for small inventories. Falls down on photos / hierarchical locations / QR labels. Most home inventories outgrow a spreadsheet around 200 items.
- vs. Snipe-IT — Snipe-IT is asset management for IT departments (laptops, monitors, software licenses). HomeBox is home / personal-property inventory. Different shapes; if you need to track corporate IT assets, use Snipe-IT.
- vs. Inventarius / Grocy / Boxoffice — Grocy is grocery / household-supplies inventory (different shape — consumable tracking, not durable goods). Inventarius is similar to HomeBox; HomeBox has more momentum and active development.
Why Run HomeBox on ElfHosted?
HomeBox self-hosts cleanly (Go binary + SQLite or Postgres), but home inventory is one place where the operational details actually matter:
- External hosting is the right shape for insurance documentation. If your house burns down, the inventory app on your home server burns with it. ElfHosted's off-site hosting is the whole point of "in case of disaster" inventory.
- HTTPS with auto-renewing TLS — required for the camera/photo capture features and for accessing from outside your LAN.
- Persistent backed-up storage — your inventory accumulates over years; backups are non-negotiable. ElfHosted's storage tier handles photo growth.
- Multi-user always-available — household members can update from anywhere.
- Updates handled — HomeBox ships releases regularly under the new maintainer.
- Single subscription: $9/month all-in.
Technical Specifications
- 🛠️ Software: HomeBox (FOSS, AGPL-3) — sysadminsmedia continuation
- ⚙️ Stack: Go binary + SQLite (default) or Postgres
- 📸 Attachments: photos, receipts (PDF), manuals, any binary up to configurable size limit
- 📋 Item fields: name, description, serial number, model, manufacturer, purchase date, purchase price, current value, warranty expiry, custom fields, photos, receipts, notes
- 📱 Mobile: mobile-responsive web UI; PWA-installable
- 🏷️ QR codes: generated per location; print as labels
- 📥 Import: CSV bulk import; manual entry
- 📤 Export: JSON, CSV; full data ownership
- 👥 Multi-user: yes — household / team accounts with role-based access
- 🔑 Subscription: $9/month — HomeBox itself is fully free
- 🌐 Access: HTTPS on your own ElfHosted subdomain
- 🔄 Updates: handled by ElfHosted
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I run HomeBox without self-hosting it?
Add it to your ElfHosted subscription — managed HomeBox instance with HTTPS, persistent backed-up storage (important for inventory data — see the insurance angle below), automatic updates, and SSO via your ElfHosted account.
Is this the original HomeBox or the new fork?
The actively-maintained sysadminsmedia/homebox continuation. The original hay-kot/homebox stalled in 2024; the sysadminsmedia fork took over with active development. Database schema is migrated; existing hay-kot users can move forward without losing data.
Why does running this externally matter for insurance?
House fires, floods, theft — events that destroy your inventory also tend to destroy the device hosting it. An ElfHosted-hosted instance is off-site, automatically backed up, accessible from any browser. The insurance use case is the strongest argument for not self-hosting on a Pi in your garage.
Can I print QR-code labels for boxes?
Yes — HomeBox generates QR codes per location. Print them on a label printer (Brother / Dymo / equivalent) or just standard sticker paper. Scan with your phone to open the matching location in HomeBox; instant "what's in this box".
How do I migrate from Sortly / Encircle / a spreadsheet?
HomeBox supports CSV bulk import. Most commercial inventory apps export to CSV. The mapping is straightforward: name / location / description / value / etc. Photos may need to be re-attached.
Are there mobile apps?
HomeBox's PWA install is the mobile app — open the URL in mobile Safari / Chrome → "Add to Home Screen" → installs as an icon, full-screen mode, camera access for photos. No native app needed.
How does it compare to Snipe-IT?
Snipe-IT is for IT-asset management (corporate laptops, software licenses, server inventory). HomeBox is for home / personal-property inventory. Use Snipe-IT for an IT department; HomeBox for a household / hobbyist / small-business non-IT inventory.
Can I track consumables (groceries, supplies)?
HomeBox is built for durable goods. For consumables (food, household supplies that get used up and replaced), Grocy is the purpose-built tool. Many users run both — HomeBox for the durable inventory, Grocy for the kitchen.
HomeBox is the self-hosted home inventory app for households that want insurance-ready documentation, warranty tracking, and "where's the thing?" answers without a per-user subscription. Hosted on ElfHosted off-site (the right shape for inventory data — your inventory shouldn't burn down when your house does), with HTTPS and managed updates for $9/month.
Only logged in customers who have purchased this product may leave a review.
Related products
Homepage
Self-hosted application dashboard with live status widgets for 100+ self-host apps — the YAML-configured "one tab to rule them all" startpage that's become the de-facto standard.
A managed instance of Homepage on ElfHosted (the 30K-star gethomepage/homepage, not to be confused with older similarly-named projects). Custom dashboard with live widgets for Plex, Jellyfin, the *arr stack, Docker, Kubernetes, Home Assistant, and 100+ more services. Configured in YAML, blazingly fast, no database. GPL-3.
Uptime Kuma
Self-hosted uptime monitoring with public status pages — the open-source UptimeRobot alternative that doesn't cap your monitor count or charge for SSL alerts.
A managed instance of Uptime Kuma on ElfHosted — the 86K-star self-hosted monitoring tool. HTTP / TCP / ping / DNS / keyword / push monitors, public status pages with custom domains, 90+ notification channels (Discord, Slack, Telegram, email, ntfy, Pushover, Apprise, etc.), multi-user, 2FA. MIT-licensed; no monitor caps, no premium tier.
Gotify
Self-hosted push notification server — your *arr stack, Uptime Kuma, Watchtower, and any webhook-capable tool fan out alerts to one Android app on your phone.
A managed instance of Gotify on ElfHosted — the self-hosted push notification server with native Android app, simple REST API, and broad ecosystem support. Most self-host tools (Uptime Kuma, the *arr stack, Watchtower, Home Assistant) speak Gotify out of the box. BSD-3 licensed; lightweight Go binary; works without a Google or Apple push-vendor account.
PairDrop
AirDrop for everyone — browser-based file sharing across iOS / Android / Mac / Windows / Linux, peer-to-peer, no app install, on your private subdomain.
A managed instance of PairDrop on ElfHosted — the cross-platform, browser-only file-sharing tool that does what AirDrop does but works between any two devices, regardless of OS. WebRTC peer-to-peer for transfers; the server only coordinates the handshake. Hosting on your own subdomain means a private namespace (no chance of bumping into strangers using the same temporary device name). GPL-3.
Donetick
Self-hosted chore tracker for households and teams — recurring tasks with rotation, point system, multi-user. The Tody / Sweepy alternative that doesn't lock you to an app store.
A managed instance of Donetick on ElfHosted — a clean, multi-user task and chore tracker. Recurring chores with auto-rotation between household members, optional point system for kid-incentive workflows, mobile-friendly PWA, no per-user paywall. AGPL-3.
Reviews
Clear filtersThere are no reviews yet.