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Measured on a real homelab

Navidrome RAM & CPU requirements (measured)

On our homelab it uses about 14 MB of RAM on a normal hour, 19 MB in busy hours, and peaked at 94 MB over the last 30 days (small library: 376 tracks (2.1 GB)).

What it really uses (process memory)

Typical (median)
14 MB
Average
14 MB
Busy hours (95th percentile)
19 MB
Highest recorded
94 MB
As docker stats shows it (with disk cache)
median 26 MB · peak 123 MB
Window
720 hours measured, up to Sep 26, 2026
Version
0.63.2
Stack (all summed)
navidrome
Workload
small library: 376 tracks (2.1 GB)
Hardware
Intel i5-10600K · 23 GB RAM · Docker (Coolify)

Caveat (Oct 2, 2026): these figures count process memory held in RAM. When the server is under memory pressure, idle apps get part of their memory swapped out and it was not being counted, so the "typical" figure may be too low; the peak is reliable. We now measure RAM plus swap and will update these numbers.

What the project says

Minimum RAM
not published
Recommended RAM
not published

The project publishes no RAM or CPU figure (only that ffmpeg is required and ARM boards like the Raspberry Pi are supported).

Sources

What makes it grow

Navidrome publishes no official RAM figure. In the resource calculator we use 128 MB minimum and 256 MB recommended, derived from this measurement on a small library (process memory peaked at 94 MB; 123 MB counting disk cache): with a large collection, plan for more.

Sizing it

Our rule of thumb: plan for the highest process memory recorded plus 25% headroom: 128 MB. Our workload is small — scale it with the factors above before buying hardware.

Combine it with other apps in the resource calculator →

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How we measure

Memory per container from Netdata on the same server, summed across the whole stack (app, database and cache) hour by hour. The main figures are the processes' own memory (anonymous memory: heap, stacks). The docker stats figure is higher because it also counts active disk cache — which Linux gives back when it needs it — and shared memory such as PostgreSQL's shared buffers. Hours where the main container had no data are left out, not counted as zero. Re-measured with a script, not by hand.

Other measured apps