DietPi vs StartOS

Both are self-hosted self-hosting solutions projects. This page compares how well each one is actually maintained — the part you cannot see from a feature list.

DietPi and StartOS are closely matched on maintenance health (78 vs 81). Neither is the safer bet on activity alone, so choose on features, licence and the stack you already run.

	DietPi	StartOS
Health score	78/100	81/100
Commits (11 mo)	819	960
Commits (last 3 mo)	169	580
Stars	6.3k	2k
Latest release	12 Sept 2026	17 Sept 2026
Licence	GPL-2.0	MIT
Built with	Shell	Rust
Typical RAM	1 GB	1 GB

DietPi

Minimal Debian OS optimized for single-board computers, which allows you to easily install and manage several services for selfhosting at home.

78/100

Healthy

Actively maintained with regular releases.

Maintenance 30/40

Releases 25/25

Community 14/20

Momentum 8/15

Commit activity more than 76% of tracked projects; popularity more than 71%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

StartOS

Browser-based, graphical Operating System (OS) that makes running a personal server as easy as running a personal computer.

81/100

Healthy

Actively maintained with regular releases.

Maintenance 31/40

Releases 25/25

Community 10/20

Momentum 15/15

Commit activity more than 79% of tracked projects; popularity more than 49%. How this is calculated.

Commits, last 11 months

How to read this

Everything above is measured, not opinion: commit counts and release dates come from the public repositories, and the health score ranks each project against all 1352 projects we track. Read the full method.

What this comparison deliberately does not do is tell you which has the better feature set. Maintenance health tells you which project will still be receiving security fixes in two years. Decide that first, then compare features on the projects that survive the filter.

See every option in this category: self-hosted self-hosting solutions.