SaaS costs add up quickly. A typical development team might spend hundreds of dollars per month on monitoring, error tracking, analytics, CI/CD, and project management tools. For many of these categories, open source alternatives have matured to the point where they’re genuinely viable replacements. Here’s my curated list for 2026.

Error Tracking: Sentry (Self-Hosted)

Replaces: Sentry SaaS ($26+/month), Bugsnag, Rollbar

Sentry is open source and offers a self-hosted option that provides nearly all the functionality of their paid cloud offering. You get error tracking, performance monitoring, session replay, and release tracking.

Self-hosting Sentry requires a server with at least 4GB RAM and runs via Docker Compose. The setup takes about an hour. For small teams, this replaces a $26-80/month SaaS subscription.

The trade-off is maintenance. You’re responsible for updates, backups, and scaling. For teams with a few developers, a $20/month VPS running self-hosted Sentry pays for itself immediately.

Analytics: Plausible or Umami

Replaces: Google Analytics, Fathom ($14+/month), Mixpanel

Plausible and Umami are privacy-focused analytics platforms that you can self-host for free. Both provide page views, referrers, geographic data, and custom events without cookies or user tracking.

Plausible is written in Elixir and is particularly lightweight. A single $5/month VPS can handle millions of page views. The interface is clean and shows exactly the metrics most sites need without the overwhelming complexity of Google Analytics.

Umami is written in Node.js and offers more customisation options, including custom dashboards and event tracking. If you need to track specific user interactions beyond page views, Umami is the better choice.

Monitoring: Grafana + Prometheus

Replaces: Datadog ($15+/host/month), New Relic, Dynatrace

The Grafana + Prometheus stack is the industry standard for open source monitoring. Prometheus collects and stores metrics, Grafana visualises them. Add Loki for log aggregation and you have a complete observability platform.

The setup complexity is higher than SaaS alternatives, but the cost savings are dramatic. Datadog at $15 per host per month adds up fast — ten servers cost $150/month. Prometheus and Grafana run on a single server for most small-to-medium deployments.

Pre-built dashboards are available for almost every technology stack: Node.js, Python, PostgreSQL, Redis, Docker, Kubernetes. Import a dashboard JSON file and you’re monitoring within minutes.

CI/CD: Woodpecker CI or Gitea Actions

Replaces: GitHub Actions (for private repos), CircleCI, Travis CI

If you’re self-hosting your Git repositories with Gitea, Gitea Actions provides GitHub Actions compatibility. Your existing workflow YAML files work with minimal modifications.

Woodpecker CI is a lightweight CI/CD system that runs on minimal resources. It supports Docker-based pipelines, matrix builds, and multi-platform builds. It won’t match the ecosystem of GitHub Actions marketplace, but for standard build-test-deploy workflows, it’s more than sufficient.

Project Management: Plane

Replaces: Jira ($7.75+/user/month), Linear, Asana

Plane is an open source project management tool that looks and feels like Linear. It supports issues, sprints, cycles, modules, and views. The self-hosted version is free and includes features that Linear charges for.

The interface is modern and responsive — a significant departure from older open source project management tools that felt clunky. If your team is currently paying for Jira seats they barely use, Plane is worth evaluating.

Feature Flags: Flagsmith or Unleash

Replaces: LaunchDarkly ($10+/seat/month), Split

Feature flags are essential for trunk-based development and progressive rollouts. Both Flagsmith and Unleash offer self-hosted community editions that cover core feature flag functionality.

Flagsmith provides a cleaner UI and includes remote configuration (not just boolean flags). Unleash has a more mature API and better SDKs across languages. Both support percentage rollouts, user targeting, and environment-specific flags.

Communication: Mattermost

Replaces: Slack ($7.25+/user/month)

Mattermost is a Slack alternative that you can self-host. It supports channels, direct messages, threads, file sharing, and integrations. The interface is similar enough to Slack that the transition is smooth.

The free Team Edition includes everything most development teams need. The paid Enterprise Edition adds compliance features, SAML SSO, and advanced permissions.

Database Management: NocoDB

Replaces: Airtable ($20+/seat/month)

NocoDB turns any SQL database into a spreadsheet-like interface. It’s useful for managing content, tracking data, or giving non-technical team members access to database data without writing SQL. Runs on top of PostgreSQL, MySQL, or SQLite.

The Self-Hosting Reality Check

Self-hosting isn’t free. You’re trading subscription costs for:

• Server costs (typically $5-50/month per service)
• Maintenance time (updates, backups, monitoring)
• Security responsibility (patching, access control)

For a solo developer or small team, the financial savings are significant. The time investment averages a few hours per month for maintenance across all services.

For larger teams, the calculation changes. When Team400.ai works with businesses on their technology strategy, one common finding is that teams of 20+ developers often benefit more from SaaS tools because the engineering time spent maintaining self-hosted infrastructure exceeds the subscription costs.

My Stack

For context, here’s what I run for my personal projects: Umami for analytics, self-hosted Sentry for errors, Prometheus + Grafana for monitoring, and Plane for project management. Total hosting cost: about $30/month on a dedicated Hetzner server. The equivalent SaaS subscriptions would cost over $150/month.

The open source ecosystem for developer tools has never been stronger. Evaluate your current SaaS spending, identify the tools you’re paying the most for, and test the open source alternatives. The quality gap has narrowed considerably, and for many tools, it’s closed entirely.