How to let friends and family into your self-hosted apps for free
Someone running NextCloud (file sharing), Navidrome (music streaming), and soon Jellyfin (video streaming) on a wants to open access to friends and family. Their internet provider blocks on the router, so they currently use Tailscale — a VPN-like tool — to reach their server remotely. The catch is that Tailscale's free plan caps connections at 6 devices or users combined, which is too few once family members are added.
Paid plans are off the table due to budget. The person already uses Caddy as a , routing traffic through their own domain. Community-suggested free alternatives include , which bypasses the need to open router ports entirely and has no user limit, paired with an gateway like Authentik or Authelia to control exactly who can log in.
Running Headscale — a self-hosted, replacement for the Tailscale coordination server — is another option that removes the user cap with no cost.
Key points
- Tailscale's free tier is capped at 6 users/devices combined — not enough for a small group of friends and family
- lets you expose apps to the internet without opening any router ports, and it's free with no user limit
- Authentik or Authelia act as a login gatekeeper in front of your apps, so only approved people can access them
- Headscale is an self-hosted alternative to Tailscale's server, removing the user cap entirely at no cost
- If Caddy is already in place as a , adding or an auth gateway fits naturally into the existing setup