Frigate NVR
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 3 nvr software
Free open-source NVR that runs object detection locally and works well with Home Assistant. Critics say it uses lots of CPU with many cameras and needs effort to set up.
Free open-source NVR that runs object detection locally and works well with Home Assistant. Critics say it uses lots of CPU with many cameras and needs effort to set up.
58 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 54
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 93%
Recommended in 12 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 54 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 14 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 12 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fully local object detection
“Open-source NVR software like Frigate can do things like the object-detection/license plate/face recognition game on local hardware”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS” “With openvino frigate can still do fully local object detection on the security case”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “My Homelab Setup” “The Frigate+ models at least can identify trash bins with a fully local model”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “Surely you have ultra-wideband radios on your bins too?” - Comment from 25 Sep 2026 on Hacker News
- Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash”
Integrates well with Home Assistant
“The lightweight object detectors plus home assistant automations and notifications are way too fun and powerful.”
Comment from 26 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: CheapSecurity – Lightweight, Self-Hosted CCTV for Linux SBCs” “Reolink with Frigate NVR. Can also put Home Assistant on the same box.”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash” “Otherwise Frigate is great and integrates well with Home Assistant”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash” Works with many camera brands
“You can also stream Reolink video to a Frigate box and access that from wherever.”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “Ring owners are returning their cameras” “Im using a g3 flex with frigate without use of unifi protect, works fine.”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “Reverse-engineering the UniFi inform protocol” “Reolink with Frigate NVR. Can also put Home Assistant on the same box.”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash” - Comment from 20 Jun 2026 in “Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS”
Runs on low-power hardware
“It takes like 1-2 watts of power, responds in 15ms, and is completely local.”
Comment from 25 Sep 2026 on Hacker News “I have Frigate and a Coral USB running happily in a VM on an N97”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Adventures in upgrading Proxmox” “My mini PC frigate installation can handle 5 cameras easily.”
Comment from 20 Mar 2026 in “MacBook M5 Pro and Qwen3.5 = Local AI Security System” - Comment from 21 Oct 2026 in “Google open-sources TorchTPU, a native PyTorch back end for TPUs”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Heavy CPU use, always decoding
“Frigate is pretty cool if you need motion detection. If you don't it's a bit wasteful because it still keeps the whole decoding pipeline active.”
Comment from 26 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: CheapSecurity – Lightweight, Self-Hosted CCTV for Linux SBCs” “Ever viewed 20 cameras simultaneously in one browser tab in Frigate and seen the CPU usage?”
Comment from 13 Sep 2026 in “US Customs supervisor busted for stealing hardware from Homeland Security PCs” Fragile dependencies, hard to update
“since it's not trivially updatable and breaks other subtle things”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Adventures in upgrading Proxmox” “so many fragile native dependencies and a super complex stack”
Comment from 17 Mar 2026 in “Home Assistant waters my plants” Detection limited by Coral, visual only
“You were definitely hitting the limitations of the coral.”
Comment from 21 Jun 2026 in “Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS” “Turns out Frigate uses visual classification only.”
Comment from 17 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: An e-ink frame that hears birds and draws them as 1800s illustrations” Setup takes real effort
“requires some effort to get working”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS” “it always stole time from me.”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “UniFi 5G”
Other nvr software people recommend
The two most recommended other nvr software, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frigate NVRThis page | 54 | 4 | 93% | 12 | — | Approved |
| UniFi Protect | 13 | 7 | 65% | 5 | — | — |
| HomeKit Secure Video | 5 | 2 | 71% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 72 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I have one for Frigate on a Raspberry Pi. Has worked well”
“Is a pretty successful open source NVR that used corals when it launched (and many people still use them with it)”
“With software like Scrypted or Frigate, I was able to use an Apple TV 4K”
“The Frigate+ models at least can identify trash bins with a fully local model”
“It takes like 1-2 watts of power, responds in 15ms, and is completely local.”
“because I was able to use AI to take the source code, replace the object detection models”
“Turns out Frigate uses visual classification only.”
“Ever viewed 20 cameras simultaneously in one browser tab in Frigate and seen the CPU usage?”
“so that Frigate can have a GPU passed through to it for image object detection/video analysis pipelines”
“The lightweight object detectors plus home assistant automations and notifications are way too fun and powerful.”
“Frigate is pretty cool if you need motion detection. If you don't it's a bit wasteful because it still keeps the whole decoding pipeline active.”
“Frigate is amazing and the detection package is of your choosing”
“I generally run security cameras on a separate VLAN and use something like frigate or other floss dvr tool”
“You were definitely hitting the limitations of the coral.”
“Frigate is nice in that it works with any old RTSP IP camera”
“requires some effort to get working”
“Open-source NVR software like Frigate can do things like the object-detection/license plate/face recognition game on local hardware”
“connect all to frigade on a separate vlan, accessible through VPN”
“Home Assistant and Frigate are great platforms that are capable of providing good privacy”
“a locally installed NVR server that pulls camera feeds over the LAN”
“supports a lot of ways to display many thumbnails simultaneously very cheaply”
“My mini PC frigate installation can handle 5 cameras easily.”
“so many fragile native dependencies and a super complex stack”
“Im using a g3 flex with frigate without use of unifi protect, works fine.”
“With openvino frigate can still do fully local object detection on the security case”
“Otherwise Frigate is great and integrates well with Home Assistant”
“You can also stream Reolink video to a Frigate box and access that from wherever.”
“Frigrate nvr + cameras that are confined to internal network. Easy peasy.”
“Frigate has made significant advances over the last few years and has improved a lot”
“100% local, private, on-device AI object recognition and classification”
“if you're using ethernet cameras it seems to work very very well”
“Truly top-notch quality, full-featured, very low maintenance, easy to set up, cheap to operate.”
“Reolink with Frigate NVR. Can also put Home Assistant on the same box.”
“possibly with Frigate for offline AI processing and notifications”
“TrueNAS scale for file backup that also runs Frigate for POE cam mgmt (similarly sandboxed)”
“I've discovered many apps I use daily through it (immich, jellyfin, frigate-nvr for examples).”
“it always stole time from me.”
“since it's not trivially updatable and breaks other subtle things”
“I have Frigate and a Coral USB running happily in a VM on an N97”
“Frigate NVR it works best when it can leverage the GPU for video transcoding and TPU for object detection”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.