Alternatives · Dashboards & Status
Glance alternatives (2026)
Glance: The nicest way to turn your daily feeds into one fast page — a reader, not a control panel.
Its Catch: Configuration is YAML only, with no editor in the UI.
Below: 3 free or free-tier tools from the same category (dashboards and status pages), free and open source first, then the closest match by shared tags. Each keeps its own Catch.
Free / OSS · GPL-3.0 · 33.2k GitHub stars
VerdictThe homelab dashboard most people end up on — clean, fast and Docker-aware.
CatchIt is a dashboard, not monitoring: it shows status but does not alert you. Configuration is hand-edited YAML, and complex layouts take trial and error. Do not expose it publicly without auth in front, since it can reveal what you run.
Free / OSS · Apache-2.0 · 1.8k GitHub stars
VerdictA much nicer `kubectl logs -f` for whole workloads.
CatchIt reads what the cluster still holds, so it does not replace a log store for history or search across days. Large clusters with chatty workloads can strain the API server. Still pre-1.0.
Free / OSS · OSS/MIT · 26.7k GitHub stars
VerdictPick Dashy if you want to tweak every pixel of your dashboard from the browser.
CatchIt overlaps heavily with Homepage; Dashy leans toward UI customisation, Homepage toward service widgets. The Vue frontend is heavier than minimal dashboards like Glance or Homer. Status checks are simple pings, not alerting.
FAQ
- What are the best free alternatives to Glance?
- Homepage, Kubetail, Dashy. All are reviewed on Stack Gems in the same category (dashboards and status pages); 3 free or open source.
- What is the catch with Glance?
- Configuration is YAML only, with no editor in the UI.
- Is there an open-source alternative to Glance?
- Yes: Homepage (GPL-3.0), Kubetail (Apache-2.0), Dashy (OSS/MIT).