Stop guessing which homelab tool to run.

Hands-on comparisons, calculators, and self-hosted alternatives, written by someone who actually runs this gear. No vendor spin, no affiliate-bait listicles.

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Virtualization / Hypervisor
Proxmox VE vs VMware ESXi
Broadcom bought VMware, ended the free ESXi tier, and moved everything to subscription bundles. That one change made Proxmox VE the default homelab hypervisor for most new builds. ESXi still wins in a few specific enterprise cases. Here is the honest split, what changed, what each one is actually good at, and how to move if you are leaving ESXi behind.
Firewall / Router
pfSense vs OPNsense
pfSense and OPNsense are the two open-source firewall platforms worth running, and they share a code ancestor (OPNsense forked from pfSense in 2015). Both are good. The choice comes down to three things: how fast you want security updates, which UI you find readable, and how much you lean on old forum threads when something breaks.
Media Server
Jellyfin vs Plex
Jellyfin and Plex both stream your media library to any device. Plex has more polish and better client apps. Jellyfin is fully free, fully self-hosted, and does not phone home. The choice is mostly about how much polish you will trade for independence and privacy, and recent Plex pricing changes have pushed a lot of people to take that trade.
NAS / Storage
TrueNAS vs Unraid
TrueNAS (ZFS) and Unraid (a flexible parity array) solve home storage in opposite ways. TrueNAS puts data integrity and performance first. Unraid puts flexibility first: mix any disk sizes, add one drive at a time, and lean on a friendly app library. The right pick depends mostly on your disks and how you plan to grow.
VPN
WireGuard vs OpenVPN
WireGuard and OpenVPN both build encrypted tunnels, but WireGuard is newer, far smaller, and faster. OpenVPN is older, slower, and more flexible about getting through restrictive networks. For homelab remote access, WireGuard is usually the right call. The exceptions are real but narrow, and they are worth knowing before you commit.
Containers
Docker vs Podman
Docker is what most people learn first. Podman is the daemonless, rootless-by-default alternative that hooks into systemd. Both run the same OCI images, so for a homelab the real difference is architecture and security posture, not what you can run. Here is how to choose, and why switching later is low-risk.
Reverse Proxy / Web Server
Caddy vs Nginx
Caddy and Nginx both serve sites and reverse-proxy your self-hosted apps. Caddy gets you automatic HTTPS with a two-line config. Nginx is faster at very high load, more configurable, and has decades of guides behind it. For most homelabs, Caddy's automatic certificates win on time saved, but the right pick depends on what you are putting it in front of.
Infrastructure as Code
Ansible vs Terraform
Ansible and Terraform are both infrastructure as code, but they do different jobs. Terraform provisions infrastructure: it creates the servers, networks, and DNS. Ansible configures it: it installs packages, edits files, and runs services. They are more complementary than competing. The real question is which one you reach for first, and for what, and the honest answer is often both.
NAS / Storage
RAID 5 vs RAID 10
RAID 5 gives you more usable capacity. RAID 10 gives you faster writes and far safer rebuilds. For modern large drives and any write-heavy workload, RAID 10 is the safer call, and on big disks RAID 5 is now actively discouraged. The one case for RAID 5 is squeezing maximum capacity out of a small, read-heavy array. Here is the full picture.
NAS / Storage
Btrfs vs ZFS
Btrfs and ZFS are both copy-on-write filesystems with checksums, snapshots, and built-in volume management. ZFS is more mature and the safer choice for multi-disk NAS pools. Btrfs lives in the Linux kernel, needs less RAM, and shines for single disks and mirrors, but its built-in RAID 5/6 is still unsafe. For most NAS builds the answer is ZFS, with a real role for Btrfs in specific spots.
NAS / Storage
RAID 6 vs RAID 10
RAID 6 gives you more usable capacity and survives any two drive failures. RAID 10 is faster, especially on writes, and rebuilds quickly, but costs half your capacity and only guarantees one failure. For large, read-heavy bulk storage, RAID 6. For write-heavy or latency-sensitive workloads like VMs and databases, RAID 10.
Containers
Dockge vs Portainer
Dockge and Portainer are both web UIs for managing Docker, but they aim at different scales. Dockge is a light, focused tool for Docker Compose stacks that keeps your compose files as plain YAML on disk. Portainer is a full container-management platform that handles Docker, Swarm, and Kubernetes across many hosts. For a single homelab host running compose, Dockge is delightfully simple. For multi-host or advanced management, Portainer.

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Why trust these comparisons?

Every comparison is written and maintained by Jonathan Caruso, a network systems administrator. Specs are kept current; verdicts come from running the tools, not rephrasing datasheets.