Beszel: Lightweight Server Monitoring for Docker and Homelabs
Beszel is a lightweight open-source server monitoring platform with Docker stats, historical data, alerts, and multi-user support. With 23k+ GitHub stars and 14M+ Docker pulls, it is the go-to choice for homelab and self-hosted monitoring.
What Is Beszel?
Beszel is a lightweight, open-source server monitoring platform built for simplicity and performance. Designed for homelab enthusiasts, DevOps engineers, and anyone running self-hosted infrastructure, Beszel provides real-time and historical metrics for CPU, memory, disk, network, temperature, GPU usage, and Docker container stats — all through a clean, intuitive web interface.
With over 23,000 GitHub stars and more than 14 million Docker pulls, Beszel has quickly become one of the most popular self-hosted monitoring solutions. It is written in Go and distributed as a single binary, making it exceptionally lightweight compared to alternatives like Grafana + Prometheus stacks.
Architecture: Hub + Agent
Beszel follows a clean two-component architecture:
- Hub — A web application built on PocketBase that provides the dashboard, user management, alert configuration, and data visualization. It runs as a Docker container and exposes port 8080.
- Agent — A lightweight binary installed on each system you want to monitor. It collects CPU, memory, disk, network, temperature, GPU, and container metrics and sends them securely to the hub.
This architecture means you run one hub instance and deploy agents on as many servers as needed. Agents use minimal resources (under 20MB RAM) and communicate over a simple HTTP API.
Key Features
Docker and Podman Container Stats
Beszel automatically tracks CPU, memory, and network usage for every container running on your monitored systems. Historical data is stored so you can review trends over time.
Configurable Alerts
Set up alerts for CPU spikes, high memory usage, disk space running low, unusual network activity, temperature thresholds, and system status changes. Alerts can be delivered via Discord, Telegram, Slack, email, Pushover, ntfy, Matrix, and many more notification channels.
Multi-User and OAuth Support
Each user manages their own set of systems. Admins can share systems across users. OAuth/OIDC authentication supports providers like Google, GitHub, GitLab, and any OpenID Connect provider — password authentication can be disabled entirely.
Automatic Backups
Beszel can automatically back up all monitoring data to disk or S3-compatible storage, ensuring your historical metrics are safe.
REST API
Access your monitoring data programmatically via the built-in REST API, enabling integration with scripts, dashboards, and automation tools.
Supported Metrics
Beszel tracks an impressive range of metrics out of the box: CPU usage (host + containers), memory usage (including swap and ZFS ARC), disk usage and I/O, network usage, load average, system temperature, GPU usage and power draw (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel), battery charge, container status for all Docker/Podman containers, and S.M.A.R.T. disk health data.
Why Self-Host Beszel?
Running Beszel on your own infrastructure means your monitoring data never leaves your network. There are no SaaS fees, no data caps, and no third-party dependencies. The entire setup takes under 5 minutes with Docker Compose, and the web UI is responsive and fast even on low-powered hardware like Raspberry Pi.
Compared to heavier alternatives like Prometheus + Grafana, Beszel is refreshingly simple — one container for the hub, one binary per agent, and you are done.
Conclusion
Beszel is the perfect monitoring solution for anyone running a homelab, small business infrastructure, or even production servers that need lightweight, reliable monitoring with beautiful visualizations. Its combination of Docker container stats, configurable alerts, multi-user support, and minimal resource usage makes it a standout choice in the self-hosted monitoring space.