Compass now supports self-hosting

By Tyler Dane•May 5, 2026
compassopen source

We open-sourced Compass Calendar in 2023 so devs could customize our minimal productivity app to their liking. But running the code beyond localhost was still tricky. We wanted to make it as easy as possible to access your instance anywhere, so we added self-hosting support to our latest release.

You can now run your own instance, on your own server, with your own database — no dependency on us.

Oh, and it's still 100% free and backed by the permissive MIT license.

Here's what that means practically and how to get started.

Who is self-hosting for?

  • Sysadmins and home-labbers who want a well-maintained app in their stack
  • Developers who are sick of third parties like Google hoarding their personal data
  • Anyone who's been burned by a hyped SaaS shutting down or changing its terms
  • People who just prefer owning their tools end-to-end

If you're fine with us hosting your data, compasscalendar.com still works great and doesn't require any of this extra work. Self-hosting is for those who want to roll up their sleeves and do their own config.

What does self-hosting actually require?

There are three high-level steps to getting Compass to work on your own infra:

  1. Provision a server — any Ubuntu VPS will do
  2. Install Compass — including Caddy, Docker, and a handful of containers
  3. Configure — set up DNS and update your .env file.

That's it. The full step-by-step guide walks you through everything. There's also a 6-minute demo video if you want to see the whole process before touching anything.

Why we built this

Not many VC-backed products show their code. Even fewer offer self-hosting guides. That's not an accident. The more user data lives on their servers, the bigger their payday when they sell out to an acquirer.

Compass is bootstrapped. Our business model is simple: free tier, premium tier (coming soon). We don't make money from your data, so we have no incentive to hoard it. If you want to host your own DB, we're genuinely happy to help you do that.

Also, we really like people who are ambitious enough to self-host. When Compass was clunky, they gave it a shot and offered constructive feedback. Handing over the keys to the code, data, and infra is like our delayed "thank you" to the self-hosting community.

Get started

>> Follow the self-hosting guide. <<

Not ready to get your hands dirty yet? No worries, you can still: