Unraid
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 5 NAS operating systems by recommenders
Recommended for turnkey setup, flexible storage and a well-built app ecosystem for home servers. Common caveat: it gets messy once you run serious infrastructure on it.
Recommended for turnkey setup, flexible storage and a well-built app ecosystem for home servers. Common caveat: it gets messy once you run serious infrastructure on it.
26 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 20
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 77%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 20 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 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
Turnkey, low-maintenance, easy to administer
“It's as turnkey as any commercial NAS I've ever used but comes with way more flexibility and future proofing”
Comment from 30 Nov 2025 in “Don't throw away your old PC–it makes a better NAS than anything you can buy” “The Unraid angle is smart — one-click install removes the biggest objection to self-hosted.”
Comment from 4 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Atrium – An open-source, self-hosted client portal” “It's great, and generally pretty low maintenance.”
Comment from 30 Nov 2025 in “Don't throw away your old PC–it makes a better NAS than anything you can buy” - Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “Ubiquiti: Enterprise NAS, Built on ZFS”
- Comment from 24 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: I've built a nice home server OS”
Strong app and container ecosystem
“NAS systems running Unraid or TrueNAS with community apps”
Comment from 24 Feb 2026 in “A simple web we own” “The whole apps/containers ecosystem is so well done.”
Comment from 20 Nov 2025 in “Run Docker containers natively in Proxmox 9.1 (OCI images)” “Selfhost with Unraid and Immich.”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Want your images back? Sure... That'll be $5!” Flexible, future-proof storage
“It's as turnkey as any commercial NAS I've ever used but comes with way more flexibility and future proofing”
Comment from 30 Nov 2025 in “Don't throw away your old PC–it makes a better NAS than anything you can buy” “losing more than parity doesn't kill the whole pool”
Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Hard to get right at scale
“Unraid was great, but once I had real infrastructure running on it the ad-hoc nature made it a huge pain to do it right.”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “Ask HN: What are you working on? (June 2026)” “I see people running dozens if not hundreds of services on UnRaid, one fart and the whole infrastructure”
Comment from 26 Jun 2026 in “Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus” Price seen as too high
“eliminating the few hours dealing with some stupid config option I messed up is easily worth $250”
Comment from 2 Dec 2025 in “Don't throw away your old PC–it makes a better NAS than anything you can buy” “I didn't feel like there was $250 of value there for me”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Don't throw away your old PC–it makes a better NAS than anything you can buy”
Other NAS operating systems people recommend
The four most recommended other NAS operating systems, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TrueNAS | 48 | 34 | 59% | 11 | — | — |
| UnraidThis page | 20 | 6 | 77% | 7 | — | Approved |
| TrueNAS SCALE | 7 | 0 | 100% | 7 | — | — |
| OpenMediaVault | 5 | 2 | 71% | 3 | — | — |
| TrueNAS CORE | 5 | 10 | 33% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
27 of the 28 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“losing more than parity doesn't kill the whole pool”
“I think Unraid is great. It has the user-employs-full-effort approach that Synology does”
“more involved than running unraid or truenas”
“I see people running dozens if not hundreds of services on UnRaid, one fart and the whole infrastructure”
“I already have an Unraid server running with more than enough compute and RAM”
“It's pretty great and incredibly easy to admin.”
“Selfhost with Unraid and Immich.”
“Unraid was great, but once I had real infrastructure running on it the ad-hoc nature made it a huge pain to do it right.”
“I am currently using unraid as my server and used it for gaming as well”
“UnRAID has released two point upgrades in the past two weeks because the previous AI-found vulnerabilities”
“I find the web portal very easy”
“it's hard to pin container versions and still keep them up-to-date”
“I'm grandfathered to get unlimited updates, though if they rugpull on that the drives are just formatted as XFS.”
“Percentages in integers don't work when the starting number is too big”
“I have an Unraid home server/NAS, which has quite nice tailscale integration.”
“The Unraid angle is smart — one-click install removes the biggest objection to self-hosted.”
“NAS systems running Unraid or TrueNAS with community apps”
“Drill through ten different 20-page long discussions with no clear answer.”
“Overall I'm very happy with it”
“eliminating the few hours dealing with some stupid config option I messed up is easily worth $250”
“That includes GUI options like Truenas/Unraid”
“I didn't feel like there was $250 of value there for me”
“It's as turnkey as any commercial NAS I've ever used but comes with way more flexibility and future proofing”
“It's great, and generally pretty low maintenance.”
“Unraid seemed to be the most appealing.”
“that's one of its strengths”
“The whole apps/containers ecosystem is so well done.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.