Beszel
Beszel is a lightweight, open-source monitoring hub for servers and containers. It uses a central Hub to collect metrics from Agents installed on each host or container, and presents real-time and historical views through a simple web dashboard. You get CPU, memory, disk, network, load, sensor data, and Docker/Podman container stats in one place, plus configurable alerts.
It’s built for developers, sysadmins, small teams, and home labs that want a self-hosted, low-overhead solution. Beszel favors a local-first design, OAuth/OIDC authentication, and S3-compatible backups, making it practical for privacy-minded environments and smaller infrastructures that don’t need the weight of full observability stacks.
Use Cases
- Small teams and home labs: Basic host and container monitoring without standing up Prometheus/Grafana.
- Resource-constrained servers and edge nodes: Lightweight agent and hub keep overhead low.
- Container-heavy environments: Unified visibility into host metrics and Docker/Podman container stats.
- GPU workloads: Track Nvidia/AMD GPU usage, temperature, and power (with the binary agent).
- Privacy-sensitive or air-gapped networks: Self-hosted, local-first design avoids exposing hosts to the public internet.
- On-call basics: Threshold alerts for CPU, memory, disk, bandwidth, temperature, load, and service status.
- Historical trends and capacity planning: Review stored metrics for hosts and containers over time.
- Team access control: Multi-user support with scoped sharing and admin roles; integrate with OIDC.
- Simple data protection: Back up monitoring data to local storage or S3-compatible object storage.
Strengths
- Lightweight footprint: Smaller and less resource-intensive than heavier monitoring stacks.
- Simple deployment: Agent + Hub architecture; multiple agent install methods (container, binary, Homebrew, Scoop, Home Assistant).
- Unified host + container monitoring: View both layers from a single UI.
- Configurable alerts: Thresholds for core system resources and service health.
- Historical metrics: Trends over time aid troubleshooting and planning.
- Multi-user and OAuth/OIDC: Integrates with identity providers; password login can be disabled.
- Local-first: Self-host the Hub; avoid exposing infrastructure publicly by default.
- S3-compatible backups: Automate backups and enable easy restore or migration.
- API access: Build simple integrations, scripts, or custom dashboards as needed.
- GPU monitoring: Nvidia and AMD metrics supported when using the binary agent.
- Built-in web UI: Low-friction dashboard for real-time and historical views.
Limitations
- Limited advanced visualization: Lacks rich, customizable dashboards found in Grafana-style ecosystems.
- Fewer third-party integrations: Alert routing and ecosystem connectors are limited; API use or custom work may be required.
- GPU metrics require the binary agent: Container-only deployments may need adjustment to monitor GPUs.
- Smaller community: Expect fewer plugins, guides, and troubleshooting resources compared to mature projects.
- Unclear large-scale story: Official focus is single Hub; no documented clustered control plane for very large fleets.
Final Thoughts
Beszel is a pragmatic fit when you want straightforward, self-hosted monitoring with minimal operational overhead. It covers the essentials—host and container metrics, alerts, history, access control, backups—without pulling in a full observability stack.
Choose Beszel for small-to-medium environments, home labs, or edge nodes where simplicity, privacy, and low resource usage matter. If you need enterprise-scale clustering, deep ecosystem integrations, or advanced visualization, pair it with other tools or consider mature monitoring platforms. For best results: secure the Hub behind your SSO (disable passwords), use S3-compatible backups, deploy agents via containers by default (switch to the binary for GPU nodes), set a small set of actionable alerts, and trial scale before broad rollout.