3 that I'm actually using, on my "Home Server" (Raspberry Pi).
One day I will be migrating the work stuff on VPS over to Docker, and then we'll see who has the most!
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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I know using work as an example is cheating, but around 1400-1500 to 5000-6000 depending on load throughout the day.
At home it's 12.
I was watching a video yesterday where an org was churning 30K containers a day because they didn't profile their application correctly and scaled their containers based on a misunderstanding how Linux deals with CPU scheduling.
I'm running 3 or 4 I think... I'm more into dedicated VMs for some reason, so my important things are running in VMs in a proxmox cluster.
Portainer says 14 (including itself) 😅
I still haven't figured out containers. 🙁
How come? What do you use to run them and what is it you have a hard time with?
I'm using docker. Tried to set up Jellyfin in one but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get it to work, even following the official documentation. Ended up just running the jellyfin package from my distros repo, which worked fine for me. Also tried running a tor snowflake, which worked, but there was some issue with the NAS being restricted and I couldn't figure out how to fix that. I kinda gave up at that point and saved the whole container thing to figure out another day. I only switched to Linux and started self-hosting last year, so I'm still pretty new to all of this.
If you do decide to look in to containers again and get stuck please make a post. We are glad to help out. A tip I can give you when asking for help. Tell the system you are using and how. Docker with compose files or portainer or something else etc. If using compose also add the yaml file you are using.
Zero. Either it’s just a service with no wrappers, or a full VM.
Why a full VM, that seems like a ton of overhead
41 containers running on Rocky Linux over here
Am not using docker yet. Currently I just have one Proxmox LXC, but am planning on selfhosting a lot more in the near future...
Awesome! I like ProxMox. Check out the Helper Scripts if you haven't already. Some people like them, some don't.
37 between ProxMox and CasaOS.
two, one for running discord backup viewer webui and the other for archiveteam warrior containers
59 according to docker info.
Hot damn. That is a far better way then counting the lines from docker ps
Hot damn
That literally got a snort, because I feel the same way when I find a much easier/cleaner way of doing something.
I recently went from 0 to 1. Reinstalled my VPS under debian, and decided to run my forgejo instance with their rootless container. Mostly as a learning experience, but also to easily decouple the forgejo version from whichever version my distro packages.
40 containers behind traefik, but I did just add a new sablier middleware to stop when iddle and start when first requested. Electricity is not cheap for me. But i got lucky to add 64GB RAM in my NAS and 128GB Ram in Desktop last march because prices went crazy
but I did just add a new sablier middleware to stop when iddle and start when first requested.
Would you mind expounding on this? Electricity is fairly affordable in my locale, however I've been on a mission to cut out consumption when it's not needed. Have you noticed an ROI?
I wouldn't expect it to matter much, idle processes are pretty cheap.
How it started : 0
Max : 0
Now : 0
Iso27002 and provenance validation goes brrrrr
Zero.
About 35 NixOS VMs though, each running either a single service (e.g. Paperless) or a suite (Sonarr and so on plus NZBGet, VPN,...).
There's additionally a couple of client VMs. All of those distribute over 3 Proxmox hosts accessing the same iSCSI target for VM storage.
SSL and WireGuard are terminated at a physical firewall box running OpnSense, so with very few exceptions, the VMs do not handle any complicated network setup.
A lot of those VMs have zero state, those that do have backup of just that state automated to the NAS (simply via rsync) and from there everything is backed up again through borg to an external storage box.
In the stateless case, deploying a new VM is a single command; in the stateful case, same command, wait for it to come up, SSH in (keys are part of the VM images), run restore-<whatever>.
On an average day, I spend 0 minutes managing the homelab.
Why VMs instead of contsiners? Seems like way more processing overhead.
Eh... Not really. Qemu does a really good job with VM virtualizarion.
I believe I could easily build containers instead of VMs from the nix config, but I actually do like having a full VM: since it's running a full OS instead of an app, all the usual nix tooling just works on it.
Also: In my day job, I actually have to deal quite a bit with containers (and kubernetes), and I just... don't like it.
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Right now I'm at 33 with 3 stopped I haven't used in a while. Also got 3 VMs running. A handful are duplicates eg redis/postgresql/photon/caddy
Running 50 on one machine, four on my fileserver and another on a hacked up hp eliteone (no screen) which runs my 3d printer. Believe my immich container is a nspawn under nixos too.
Some are a wip but the majority are in use. Mostly internal services with a couple internet facing, I've got a good backlog of work to do on some with some refactoring my nixos configs for many too 😅.
From my Erying ES system:
Assuming Cloudflare Tunnels/Zero Trust, how does that run in a container. I was vacillating between installing traditionally, or Docker and decided on the former. So I've always been curious as to how it performed.
My services are quite small (static website, forgejo and a couple more services) but see no performance issues.
All of you bragging about 100+ containers, please may in inquire as to what the fuck that's about? What are you doing with all of those?
A little of this, a little of that...I may also have a problem... >_>;
The List
Quickstart
- dockersocket
- ddns-updater
- duckdns
- swag
- omada-controller
- netdata
- vaultwarden
- GluetunVPN
- crowdsec
Databases
- postgresql14
- postgresql16
- postgresql17
- Influxdb
- redis
- Valkey
- mariadb
- nextcloud
- Ntfy
- PostgreSQL_Immich
- postgresql17-postgis
- victoria-metrics
- prometheus
- MySQL
- meilisearch
Database Admin
- pgadmin4
- adminer
- Chronograf
- RedisInsight
- mongo-express
- WhoDB
- dbgate
- ChartDB
- CloudBeaver
Database Exporters
- prometheus-qbittorrent-exporter
- prometheus-immich-exporter
- prometheus-postgres-exporter
- Scraparr
Networking Admin
- heimdall
- Dozzle
- Glances
- it-tools
- OpenSpeedTest-HTML5
- Docker-WebUI
- web-check
- networking-toolbox
Legally Acquired Media Display
- plex
- jellyfin
- tautulli
- Jellystat
- ErsatzTV
- posterr
- jellyplex-watched
- jfa-go
- medialytics
- PlexAniSync
- Ampcast
- freshrss
- Jellyfin-Newsletter
- Movie-Roulette
Education
- binhex-qbittorrentvpn
- flaresolverr
- binhex-prowlarr
- sonarr
- radarr
- jellyseerr
- bazarr
- qbit_manage
- autobrr
- cleanuparr
- unpackerr
- binhex-bitmagnet
- omegabrr
Books
- BookLore
- calibre
- Storyteller
Storage
- LubeLogger
- immich
- Manyfold
- Firefly-III
- Firefly-III-Data-Importer
- OpenProject
- Grocy
Archival Storage
- Forgejo
- docmost
- wikijs
- ArchiveTeam-Warrior
- archivebox
- ipfs-kubo
- kiwix-serve
- Linkwarden
Backups
- Duplicacy
- pgbackweb
- db-backup
- bitwarden-export
- UnraidConfigGuardian
- Thunderbird
- Open-Archiver
- mail-archiver
- luckyBackup
Monitoring
- healthchecks
- UptimeKuma
- smokeping
- beszel-agent
- beszel
Metrics
- Unraid-API
- HDDTemp
- telegraf
- Varken
- nut-influxdb-exporter
- DiskSpeed
- scrutiny
- Grafana
- SpeedFlux
Cameras
- amcrest2mqtt
- frigate
- double-take
- shinobipro
HomeAuto
- wyoming-piper
- wyoming-whisper
- apprise-api
- photon
- Dawarich
- Dawarich---Sidekiq
Specific Tasks
- QDirStat
- alternatrr
- gaps
- binhex-krusader
- wrapperr
Other
- Dockwatch
- Foundry
- RickRoll
- Hypermind
Plus a few more that I redacted.
100 containers isn’t really a lot. Projects often use 2-3 containers. Thats only something like 30-50 services.
"Only"
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I am like Oprah yelling “you get a container, you get a container, Containers!!!” At my executables.
I create aliases using toolbox so I can run most utils easily and securely.
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31 Containers in all. I have been up as high as ~60 and have paired it back removing the things I wasn't using.
I also tend to remove anything that uses appreciable CPU at idle and I rarely run applications that require further containers in a stack just to boot, my needs aren't that heavy.
My containers are running containers... At least 24.
- Because I'm old, crusty, and prefer software deployments in a similar manner.
Isn't that harder?
It depends a lot on what you want to do and a little on what you're used to. It's some configuration overhead so it may not be worth the extra hassle if you're only running a few services (and they don't have dependency conflicts). IME once you pass a certain complexity level it becomes easier to run new services in containers, but if you're not sure how they'd benefit your setup, you're probably fine to not worry about it until it becomes a clear need.
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64 containers in total, 60 running - the remaining 4 are Watchtowers that I run manually whenever I feel like it (and have time to fix things if something should break).
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140 running containers and 33 stopped (that I spin up sometimes for specific tasks or testing new things), so 173 total on Unraid. I have them gouped into:
- 118 Auto-updates (low chance of breaking updates or non-critical service that only I would notice if it breaks)
- 55 Manual-updates (either it's family-facing e.g. Jellyfin, or it's got a high chance of breaking updates, or it updates very infrequently so I want to know when that happens, or it's something I want to keep particular note of or control over what time it updates e.g. Jellyfin when nobody's in the middle of watching something)
I subscribe to all their github release pages via FreshRSS and have them grouped into the Auto/Manual categories. Auto takes care of itself and I skim those release notes just to keep aware of any surprises. Manual usually has 1-5 releases each day so I spend 5-20 minutes reading those release notes a bit more closely and updating them as a group, or holding off until I have more bandwidth for troubleshooting if it looks like an involved update.
Since I put anything that might cause me grief if it breaks in the manual group, I can also just not pay attention to the system for a few days and everything keeps humming along. I just end up with a slightly longer manual update list when I come back to it.
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