Quick Picks

What to Look for in a Self-Hosted Music Server

The Full Ranking

1. Navidrome -- Best Overall

Quick Start: Navidrome with Docker Compose

2. Funkwhale -- Best for Social and Federation

3. Jellyfin -- Best All-in-One Media Server

4. Koel -- Best Web UI

5. Ampache -- Most Feature-Rich Legacy Option

6. gonic -- Lightest Subsonic Server

7. Airsonic-Advanced -- Legacy Subsonic Fork

8. LMS (Logitech Media Server) -- Best for Squeezebox

Honorable Mention: Beets

Full Feature Comparison

How We Evaluated

Related Before picking a server, know what actually matters: Subsonic API compatibility. This is the single most important factor for mobile listening. The Subsonic API is a de facto standard that dozens of mobile apps support — Symfonium (Android), play:Sub (iOS), DSub, Ultrasonic, and more. If a server speaks Subsonic, you get excellent mobile apps for free without the project maintaining its own. Navidrome, Ampache, gonic, and Airsonic-Advanced all support it. Transcoding. If your library is FLAC and you want to stream over cellular, the server needs to transcode to a lower bitrate on the fly. Most servers handle this, but check whether it needs FFmpeg installed separately. Resource usage. Music servers vary wildly. Navidrome and gonic run comfortably on a Raspberry Pi. Funkwhale and Jellyfin need a real server with 2-4 GB of RAM. Match the server to your hardware. Multi-user support. If your household shares a server, you want separate accounts with independent playlists, favorites, and play history. Every server on this list supports multiple users, but the quality of the implementation varies. Smart playlists. Auto-generated playlists based on rules (genre, year, play count, rating) are what separate a music server from a file browser. Navidrome, Ampache, and Koel do this well. Gonic does not. Navidrome is the best self-hosted music streaming server for most people. It is lightweight (30-50 MB of RAM idle), fast (written in Go), and fully compatible with the Subsonic API. That API compatibility means you can use any Subsonic-compatible mobile app — Symfonium, play:Sub, DSub, Ultrasonic — as your client. The built-in web UI is clean and responsive, with album art, smart playlists, lyrics, and Last.fm scrobbling. Navidrome scans your existing music directory without modifying or copying files. Point it at your /music folder and it indexes everything. It supports FLAC, MP3, AAC, OGG, OPUS, WMA, and more. Transcoding is handled via FFmpeg when clients request a lower bitrate. The project is actively maintained with frequent releases. It went from v0.54 to v0.60.3 in early 2026, adding Jukebox mode, improved smart playlists, and better multi-disk album handling. Best for: Anyone who wants a dedicated music server that is fast, light, and works with the best mobile apps available. Read our full guide: How to Self-Host Navidrome Start it with docker compose up -d and open http://your-server:4533. Create your admin account on first access. Connect a mobile app using the server URL with /rest as the Subsonic endpoint. Funkwhale is not just a music server — it is a federated music platform. It supports ActivityPub, the same protocol behind Mastodon, meaning Funkwhale instances can share music libraries with each other. Upload your own music, subscribe to podcasts, follow users on other instances, and build shared playlists across the fediverse. Funkwhale has a modern web UI with playlist management, favorites, radio modes, and podcast support. It uses a Django/Python backend with PostgreSQL and Redis, which means it is heavier than Navidrome — expect 500 MB to 1 GB of RAM usage. Best for: Users who want social features, federation with other instances, and podcast support alongside their music library. Read our full guide: How to Self-Host Funkwhale Jellyfin is primarily a video media server, but its music support is solid enough to be a strong contender — especially if you already run it for movies and TV. You get a unified library for video, music, audiobooks, and photos, with a single web UI and mobile apps covering everything. Jellyfin's music features include album browsing, artist pages, playlists, lyrics, and Last.fm scrobbling via plugin. It supports hardware transcoding for video (Intel QSV, NVIDIA NVENC, VA-API), and software transcoding for audio. The mobile apps (Jellyfin for Android/iOS, Finamp for music-focused use) are free. The trade-off is that Jellyfin's music experience is a generalist's implementation. It lacks Subsonic API support (unless you add a plugin), smart playlists are limited compared to Navidrome, and the music UI is not as refined as a dedicated music server. Best for: Users who already run Jellyfin for video and want one server for everything, or who want a single-install solution for all media types. Read our full guide: How to Self-Host Jellyfin Koel has the most visually polished web interface of any self-hosted music server. Built with Vue.js, it looks and feels like a modern streaming service — album art grids, smooth transitions, a built-in equalizer, and a visualizer. If you primarily listen to music from a browser and want the experience to feel like Spotify, Koel delivers. Koel supports smart playlists, Last.fm scrobbling, optional Spotify integration (for browsing Spotify's catalog alongside your local library), and multi-user accounts. It is a Laravel/PHP application backed by MariaDB. Best for: Users who listen primarily from a browser and want the most visually appealing experience. Not ideal if mobile apps matter to you. Read our full guide: How to Self-Host Koel Ampache has been around since 2001, making it one of the oldest self-hosted music servers still actively maintained. That longevity shows — it has an enormous feature set covering music, video, podcasts, radio streams, and Subsonic API compatibility. It supports multiple music catalogs, granular user permissions, and flexible access controls. Ampache v7.x modernized the web UI significantly, but it still carries the weight of two decades of features. The PHP/MySQL stack is familiar but heavier than newer Go-based alternatives. If you need features like per-catalog permissions, democratic playback (users vote on the next song), or built-in video support alongside music, Ampache is the only option that does it all. Best for: Power users who need granular control, multiple catalogs, or the combination of music, video, and podcast support in a single server. Read our full guide: How to Self-Host Ampache gonic strips the concept of a music server down to its essentials. It is a Subsonic-compatible server written in Go with almost no web UI — you manage and listen to your library entirely through Subsonic client apps. This makes it the lightest option available, running on less than 20 MB of RAM. gonic supports on-the-fly transcoding, multi-user accounts, Last.fm/ListenBrainz scrobbling, and podcast downloads. It scans your music directory and serves it over the Subsonic API. That is all it does, and it does it well. Best for: Users who exclusively use Subsonic mobile apps and want the lightest possible server footprint. Ideal for Raspberry Pi or low-power NAS devices. Airsonic-Advanced is a fork of the original Airsonic project, which itself forked from Subsonic when Subsonic went proprietary. It is a Java application with a web UI, Subsonic API compatibility, podcast support, and jukebox mode. Development has slowed significantly. The project's last major release was in 2023, and activity on GitHub is sparse. Navidrome has effectively replaced it in the self-hosted music ecosystem. We include it here for completeness and for users who have existing Airsonic installations. Best for: Existing Airsonic users who have not yet migrated. For new installations, use Navidrome instead. LMS is the server component of the Squeezebox ecosystem. If you have Squeezebox hardware or use software Squeezebox players (like piCorePlayer on a Raspberry Pi), LMS is the only real option. It has a massive plugin ecosystem covering internet radio, streaming service integration, multi-room audio, and advanced DSP. LMS is a niche pick. It excels in the Squeezebox world but is not a general-purpose music streaming server. If you do not have Squeezebox hardware or software players, skip it. Best for: Squeezebox hardware owners. No one else. Beets is not a streaming server — it is a music library management tool. It fixes tags, fetches metadata from MusicBrainz, normalizes album art, detects duplicates, and organizes files into a consistent directory structure. If your music library is a mess of inconsistent tags and folder names, run Beets before pointing any server at it. Navidrome, Ampache, and every other server on this list will produce better results when fed a well-organized library. We assessed each server on five criteria, weighted by what matters most to someone replacing Spotify or Apple Music with a self-hosted solution: Navidrome scores highest across these criteria, which is why it is our top pick. It is not the most feature-rich (Ampache) or the most visually impressive (Koel), but it nails the combination of lightweight deployment, excellent mobile support, and active development. Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. Hide child comments as well For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse