toolchest_

Measured on a real homelab

Nextcloud RAM & CPU requirements (measured)

On our homelab it uses about 89 MB of RAM on a normal hour, 128 MB in busy hours, and peaked at 867 MB over the last 30 days (3 users, household files and sync, with notify_push).

What it really uses (process memory)

Typical (median)
89 MB
Average
94 MB
Busy hours (95th percentile)
128 MB
Highest recorded
867 MB
As docker stats shows it (with disk cache)
median 247 MB · peak 1.3 GB
Window
720 hours measured, up to Sep 26, 2026
Version
35.0.1
Stack (all summed)
app + cron + notify_push + PostgreSQL + Redis
Workload
3 users, household files and sync, with notify_push
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 makes it grow

RAM and CPU scale with concurrent user count (roughly 100 MB RAM per active user) and the number of enabled apps (e.g. Talk, Collabora).

Sizing it

Our rule of thumb: plan for the highest process memory recorded plus 25% headroom: 1.1 GB. 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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Self-hosting photos, files or passwords? Keep an off-site copy (3-2-1 rule): pCloud lifetime backup

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