About ossreplace

ossreplace.com is an independent directory of open-source software you can self-host to replace paid SaaS. We aggregate public data — GitHub activity, package downloads, hosting provider pricing, security advisories, Reddit and Hacker News discussions — into one comprehensive page per project.

Who runs it

Built and operated by Cody Raczniak, an independent operator and full-stack developer. I run my own infrastructure (49 cron jobs, two scanner services, a self-hosted vector database) and have been picking apart software systems for years doing security research and bug bounty hunting. I built ossreplace because I got tired of paying $40/mo for tools that have free, well-maintained open-source equivalents that I could self-host for $5/mo on Hetzner.

What makes us different

• Cost calculator on every page. Other directories tell you a project exists. We tell you exactly what it costs per month to self-host on Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Vultr, or Linode.
• Composite health score. A 6-dimension score (activity, maturity, community, security, sustainability, adoption) updated daily, with the formula and inputs visible on every page. See methodology.
• Real-time community sentiment. Hacker News and Reddit threads from the last year, embedded with vote counts and comment volume.
• Vulnerability tracking. Open security advisories from the OSV.dev database.
• No vendor sponsorship. No SaaS vendor pays us for placement. Project rankings are pure data.

How we make money

Honestly: affiliate links to hosting providers (Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Hostinger, Vultr, Linode) and adjacent paid products. When you click a hosting affiliate link from a cost-calculator page and sign up, we get a commission. That commission funds our infrastructure and time. The recommendations themselves are based purely on computed cost-of-ownership for the project's actual requirements — no provider can pay for a higher rank.

Display advertising once we hit network thresholds (Mediavine, Raptive). Direct sponsorships for projects that want featured placement (clearly disclosed, never affecting rank).

Data sources

• GitHub REST + GraphQL API (project metadata, activity, releases)
• OSV.dev (security advisories, free Google-maintained DB)
• Hacker News Algolia API + Reddit JSON endpoints (sentiment)
• Hetzner Cloud / DigitalOcean / Vultr / Linode pricing APIs
• Docker Hub (image pull counts)
• NPM, PyPI, crates.io (package download stats)
• Curated awesome-* lists (project discovery)

Contact

Found a data error? An OSS project we should add? Sponsorship inquiry? Email [email protected].