Comparison · Puter alternative

Vulos as a Puter alternative

Puter is a web desktop — an “internet computer” that runs on servers, with a hosted version you can use in a browser tab right now. Vulos is the operating system of a single machine you own. Both are open source and both are self-hostable, so the honest question is not which is better but which shape you want.

Every Puter fact below was read from Puter's own repository, its self-hosting document and its developer docs on 10 August 2026. Puter ships releases roughly monthly, so treat this page as a snapshot — the sources are listed at the bottom.

What Puter actually is

Puter's own README calls it “an advanced, open-source, self-hostable internet computer designed to be feature-rich, fast, and highly extensible”. For users that means a browser desktop with a real suite of applications — a notepad, a spreadsheet, a camera, a voice recorder and more — plus a file manager and an app store. It is available as a hosted service at puter.com, and you can also run it yourself.

The self-hosted shape is a container stack, not a single process. Puter's doc/self-hosting.md describes a docker-compose.yml that brings up Puter “plus every external service it needs” — Caddy as a reverse proxy, MariaDB 11 for SQL, Valkey for cache and rate limiting, DynamoDB-local as a key-value store, and RustFS for S3-compatible object storage. It also requires a domain you control with a wildcard DNS record (*.your-domain.com), because Puter routes by subdomain. A local LLM via Ollama is an opt-in compose profile.

For developers there is Puter.js: a single script tag or npm module that gives an app AI (Claude, GPT, Gemini and, per their docs, 500+ models), cloud storage, a key-value database, static hosting and auth — with no API keys and no server of your own. It is paid for by a “User Pays” model, where each user covers their own AI and cloud costs. Their docs put the pitch bluntly: “Whether your app has 1 user or 1 million users, it costs you zero to run.”

The licence is AGPL-3.0: “This repository, including all its contents, sub-projects, modules, and components, is licensed under AGPL-3.0 unless explicitly stated otherwise.”

What Puter is genuinely good at

  • It is far more finished than we are. A desktop, a file manager, a working application suite and an app store you can publish to and monetise through. That is a lot of shipped product.
  • You can try it in five seconds. puter.com is a URL. Vulos is an OS image and a machine. For evaluating an idea, that difference is enormous and it is entirely in Puter's favour.
  • Puter.js is a real and unusual piece of engineering. A frontend-only app with AI, storage and a database, no keys, no backend, and no per-user cost to the developer. There is nothing equivalent in Vulos, and we are not pretending otherwise.
  • It moves fast and it is popular. As of 10 August 2026 the repository has roughly 43,000 stars, with release 26.08 published on 6 August 2026 and commits landing daily.
  • AGPL-3.0 is a deliberate, principled choice. It keeps hosted derivatives open. If that is the guarantee you want from a project, AGPL gives it to you and our permissive licence does not.

What Vulos actually is

Vulos is a sovereign personal server with a browser-native desktop, running on one machine — bare metal, a VM, or a VPS. The shell is a React app; the backend is a single Go binary with SQLite underneath. A basic install needs no external database, no object store, no cache tier and no wildcard DNS: one binary and its web root.

The point is agency rather than a privacy slogan. Every installed app runs in its own Linux network namespace. Native Linux applications launch into their own virtual display and stream into a browser window over WebRTC on demand, stopping when you close the window. The app registry is signed with Ed25519 against an offline root key baked into the image, and installs fail closed. Authentication is passkeys, PIN and TOTP with a 24-word recovery phrase, and there are no third-party identity providers involved.

On AI, the difference from Puter is structural rather than a matter of degree. Our architecture doc states the stance directly: all AI and GPU compute runs on the user's own box, mediated by llmux with a local model or your own provider key — “Nothing in this codebase hosts, provisions, or meters AI/GPU compute on your behalf.” Puter's model routes AI through Puter's service and bills the user; ours does not exist as a service at all. Neither is cheating; they are opposite answers to the same question. Vulos is licensed MIT OR Apache-2.0.

Side by side

 PuterVulos
CategoryWeb desktop / “internet computer” running on serversOperating system for a machine you own
LicenceAGPL-3.0MIT OR Apache-2.0
Hosted optionYes — puter.com, free to startNone. There is no Vulos service to sign up for
Self-host footprintDocker Compose stack: Puter, Caddy, MariaDB 11, Valkey, DynamoDB-local, RustFS S3One Go binary + SQLite + a web root
DNS requirementA domain with a wildcard record — it routes by subdomainNone required for a local install
Where AI runsThrough Puter's service (or an opt-in local Ollama profile), billed to the userOn your box, via llmux — local model or your own provider key
Developer SDKPuter.js — AI, storage, key-value DB, hosting, auth, no API keysNo equivalent
App storeYes, with monetisationNo. A signed registry, not a marketplace
Native Linux appsNot in scope — apps are web appsStreamed into browser windows on demand (virtual display + WebRTC)
Project scale (checked 10 August 2026)~43,000 stars; release 26.08 on 6 August 2026; daily commitsFirst tagged release v0.1.0, 7 August 2026 — very new

Table scrolls sideways on narrow screens.

Where Vulos is weaker

Puter is the more mature product by a wide margin, and pretending otherwise would not survive five minutes of your own research:

  • Maturity and community. Puter has roughly 43,000 GitHub stars and has been shipping monthly releases; Vulos published its first tagged release, v0.1.0, on 7 August 2026. We are at the beginning.
  • There is no way to try Vulos in a browser tab. Puter has a free hosted instance. To see Vulos you need Docker, a spare machine, or a VPS. That is a genuinely worse first experience.
  • No app store, no developer SDK, no third-party ecosystem. Puter.js and the Puter App Store give developers a distribution and revenue path. Vulos has neither today.
  • Far fewer applications. Puter's built-in suite is broader than ours, and its store adds more.
  • It asks for the whole machine. x86_64 or arm64 with UEFI firmware, Secure Boot disabled (our bootloader is not signed for it), 2 GB RAM minimum and 10 GB of disk. Puter's Docker stack is heavier in services but lighter in commitment — it runs on a host you already have.
  • Multi-instance sync is narrower than the design. Our own architecture doc says so: cr-sqlite is not integrated, so the leaderless whole-database CRDT merge does not run today. What exists is a pure-Go CRDT for the app registry over mDNS on the same LAN, plus an S3 snapshot of one instance's database file — not a cross-node merge.

Which one should you pick

Pick Puter if…

  • You want something finished and usable today, with a broad app suite behind it.
  • You are building web apps and want AI, storage and a database with no keys and no per-user cost to you.
  • You want to publish and monetise an app in an existing store.
  • You want a hosted option, or the ability to hand someone a URL.
  • You want a copyleft guarantee that hosted derivatives stay open.

Pick Vulos if…

  • You want the machine your work lives on to be one you can open, read and replace.
  • You want no service in the path at all — no hosted tier, nothing of ours your box depends on.
  • You want AI that runs on your hardware, with no third party metering or seeing it.
  • You want one binary and SQLite rather than a six-service stack and wildcard DNS.
  • You want native Linux applications available in the browser, and signed fail-closed app installs.
  • You accept a young project in exchange for owning the whole stack.

Sources, checked 10 August 2026