HortusFox is a free, self-hosted, open-source plant tracking app. See 2026 features, pricing, pros, cons, and alternatives for plant collectors.
HortusFox is an open-source, self-hosted application for cataloging and caring for a plant collection, built by developer Daniel Brendel for plant owners who want full control over their own data rather than relying on a commercial cloud service. It runs on a standard PHP and MariaDB/MySQL stack and is delivered as a progressive web app, so it works well on both desktop and mobile without needing a native app store listing.
The project is aimed squarely at the growing community of tech-savvy houseplant collectors who track dozens or hundreds of individual plants and want structured record-keeping, care reminders, and the option to share access with family members or fellow hobbyists.
Because there is no company or subscription model behind it, HortusFox is distributed under the MIT license on GitHub, and anyone can deploy their own instance for free using Docker, one-click installers on platforms like Cloudron and elest.io, or a manual PHP hosting setup.
At its core, HortusFox lets users add plants with photos, species information, and location assignments, then view everything on a dashboard that surfaces which plants need attention. A warning system flags overdue watering, fertilizing, or repotting based on schedules the user configures per plant.
Collaboration is a defining feature: multiple authenticated users can share a single collection, chat with each other inside the app, and see a full history log of who added, edited, or cared for which plant. This makes HortusFox useful for households, community gardens, or plant shops with several staff members managing the same inventory.
Supporting features include a supply inventory for tracking pots and soil, a task calendar, weather integration for outdoor care planning, customizable themes and profiles, admin controls for multi-user instances, and a REST API introduced in version 3.1 for building custom integrations.
HortusFox is entirely free and open source under the MIT license; there is no paid tier, subscription, or freemium gate built into the software itself. The only cost involved is whatever server or hosting infrastructure the user chooses to run it on, which can range from a few dollars a month on a budget VPS to free on existing home-lab hardware.
Some third-party platforms, such as Cloudron and elest.io, offer paid one-click hosting for HortusFox as a convenience for users who don't want to manage a server themselves, but these are independent hosting services rather than an official HortusFox pricing plan, and the project explicitly disclaims responsibility for third-party hosting quality.
Yes, HortusFox is fully free and open source under the MIT license. The only cost is hosting it on your own server or a paid third-party host.
Yes, HortusFox is designed to be self-hosted. It can be deployed via Docker, one-click installers on platforms like Cloudron or elest.io, or a manual PHP and MariaDB/MySQL setup.
HortusFox was created by developer Daniel Brendel and is maintained as an open-source project under the hortusfox GitHub organization.
Yes, HortusFox supports multiple authenticated user accounts that can share a collection, chat with each other, and see a history log of care actions.
HortusFox works as a progressive web app that can be added to a phone's home screen, but there is no separate native iOS or Android app.
Yes, a REST API was introduced in version 3.1, allowing developers to build custom integrations on top of a HortusFox instance.