"Elf-Disclosure" for Feb 2025
During February, we added a few "fediverse" apps, a promising new download manager, hit an annoying storage upgrade bug, and matured both the US West Coast DC, and the Elf-illiate program.
To get us started, here are some geeky stats for Feb 2025, followed by a summary of some of the user-facing changes announced this month in the blog...
Stats
| Focus | Dec 2024 | Jan 2024 | Feb 2025 |
| Discord members | 2328 | 2427 | 2495 |
| YouTube subscribers | 618 | 654 | 678 |
| TikTok followers | 28 | 28 | 28 |
| X followers | 90 | 93 | 96 |
| BlueSky followers | - | - | 1 |
| Fediverse followers | - | - | 0 |
The stats below illustrate CPU cores used (not percentage). These stats only cover the DE cluster at present, we're working on cross-cluster metrics aggregation to make this data more useful.
Tenant CPU load on average is lower than the previous month, but this may be because we encouraged more US users to migrate to the US datacenter in the wake of Hetzner speed/peering issues.
kubectl top nodes
NAME CPU(cores) CPU(%) MEMORY(bytes) MEMORY(%)
fairy01 787m 4% 34155Mi 26%
fairy02 1092m 6% 39519Mi 30%
fairy03 1187m 7% 24686Mi 19%
gretel01 3650m 30% 38618Mi 60%
gretel02 511m 4% 14237Mi 22%
gretel03 620m 5% 15344Mi 23%
gretel07 632m 3% 31610Mi 24%
gretel08 2179m 13% 30701Mi 23%
gretel09 748m 4% 30012Mi 23%
gretel10 2260m 14% 61511Mi 47%
gretel11 1001m 6% 39465Mi 30%
gretel13 592m 3% 27044Mi 21%
gretel14 663m 4% 26131Mi 20%
gretel15 1900m 11% 47002Mi 36%
gretel16 1050m 6% 25330Mi 19%
gretel17 1339m 8% 40058Mi 31%
gretel19 519m 3% 13563Mi 10%
gretel20 942m 5% 29987Mi 23%
gretel22 1104m 6% 28272Mi 21%
gretel23 1425m 8% 39173Mi 30%
gretel26 963m 6% 24528Mi 19%
gretel27 459m 2% 23879Mi 18%
gretel30 2706m 16% 40510Mi 63%
gretel31 5046m 31% 56759Mi 44%
gretel33 747m 4% 16327Mi 25%
gretel37 906m 5% 25094Mi 19%
hansel01 1186m 9% 25611Mi 39%
hansel02 1808m 15% 25012Mi 38%
hansel04 2060m 17% 27165Mi 42%
hansel05 2540m 21% 24557Mi 38%
hansel06 1910m 15% 21074Mi 32%
hansel07 2718m 22% 28893Mi 45%
hansel08 927m 7% 32238Mi 50%
hansel14 1295m 10% 29500Mi 45%
hansel15 1960m 16% 42793Mi 66%
hansel16 1385m 11% 29855Mi 46%
hansel17 1273m 10% 21838Mi 34%
hansel18 2091m 17% 30429Mi 47%
hansel20 1544m 12% 26133Mi 40%
Last month (Dec)'s for comparison:
kubectl top nodes
NAME CPU(cores) CPU% MEMORY(bytes) MEMORY%
fairy01 3253m 20% 48989Mi 38%
fairy02 2219m 13% 38351Mi 29%
fairy03 3600m 22% 35117Mi 27%
gretel01 1976m 16% 31328Mi 48%
gretel02 882m 7% 20904Mi 32%
gretel07 1617m 10% 27626Mi 21%
gretel08 2241m 14% 41597Mi 32%
gretel09 1145m 7% 28556Mi 22%
gretel10 1587m 9% 27677Mi 21%
gretel11 5257m 32% 40538Mi 31%
gretel13 681m 4% 64061Mi 49%
gretel14 944m 5% 26839Mi 20%
gretel15 1624m 10% 35381Mi 27%
gretel16 1876m 11% 29543Mi 22%
gretel17 2683m 16% 40151Mi 31%
gretel19 1813m 11% 25495Mi 19%
gretel20 1739m 10% 39069Mi 30%
gretel22 756m 4% 20475Mi 15%
gretel23 791m 4% 28535Mi 22%
gretel26 1452m 9% 24623Mi 19%
gretel27 1378m 8% 19278Mi 14%
gretel30 6652m 41% 31794Mi 49%
gretel31 2038m 12% 82366Mi 63%
gretel33 2047m 12% 30128Mi 46%
gretel37 3329m 20% 27933Mi 21%
hansel01 3332m 27% 49937Mi 77%
hansel02 2432m 20% 43139Mi 67%
hansel03 1523m 19% 32627Mi 50%
hansel13 2077m 25% 45012Mi 70%
hansel14 3078m 25% 43553Mi 67%
hansel15 1652m 13% 46544Mi 72%
hansel16 2741m 22% 42101Mi 65%
hansel17 1620m 13% 30437Mi 47%
hansel18 2203m 18% 40614Mi 63%
hansel19 6146m 51% 48192Mi 75%
hansel20 1712m 14% 25911Mi 40%
This graph represents memory usage across the entire (DE) cluster.
Other high consumers of RAM:
- csi-rclone: used for mounting all rclone-compatible storage mounts, primarily RealDebrid libraries
- kube-system: the Kubernetes control plane, including the cilium agents which manage the networking / policy enforcement (currently 11K flows/s across 30 nodes)
- traefik: all inbound access to the cluster / services
- mediafusion: an excellent (but RAM-hungry!) Stremio addon
kubectl top nodes
NAME CPU(cores) CPU(%) MEMORY(bytes) MEMORY(%)
fairy01 787m 4% 34155Mi 26%
fairy02 1092m 6% 39519Mi 30%
fairy03 1187m 7% 24686Mi 19%
gretel01 3650m 30% 38618Mi 60%
gretel02 511m 4% 14237Mi 22%
gretel03 620m 5% 15344Mi 23%
gretel07 632m 3% 31610Mi 24%
gretel08 2179m 13% 30701Mi 23%
gretel09 748m 4% 30012Mi 23%
gretel10 2260m 14% 61511Mi 47%
gretel11 1001m 6% 39465Mi 30%
gretel13 592m 3% 27044Mi 21%
gretel14 663m 4% 26131Mi 20%
gretel15 1900m 11% 47002Mi 36%
gretel16 1050m 6% 25330Mi 19%
gretel17 1339m 8% 40058Mi 31%
gretel19 519m 3% 13563Mi 10%
gretel20 942m 5% 29987Mi 23%
gretel22 1104m 6% 28272Mi 21%
gretel23 1425m 8% 39173Mi 30%
gretel26 963m 6% 24528Mi 19%
gretel27 459m 2% 23879Mi 18%
gretel30 2706m 16% 40510Mi 63%
gretel31 5046m 31% 56759Mi 44%
gretel33 747m 4% 16327Mi 25%
gretel37 906m 5% 25094Mi 19%
hansel01 1186m 9% 25611Mi 39%
hansel02 1808m 15% 25012Mi 38%
hansel04 2060m 17% 27165Mi 42%
hansel05 2540m 21% 24557Mi 38%
hansel06 1910m 15% 21074Mi 32%
hansel07 2718m 22% 28893Mi 45%
hansel08 927m 7% 32238Mi 50%
hansel14 1295m 10% 29500Mi 45%
hansel15 1960m 16% 42793Mi 66%
hansel16 1385m 11% 29855Mi 46%
hansel17 1273m 10% 21838Mi 34%
hansel18 2091m 17% 30429Mi 47%
hansel20 1544m 12% 26133Mi 40%
Last month (Jan 2025)'s for comparison:
kubectl top nodes
NAME CPU(cores) CPU% MEMORY(bytes) MEMORY%
fairy01 3253m 20% 48989Mi 38%
fairy02 2219m 13% 38351Mi 29%
fairy03 3600m 22% 35117Mi 27%
gretel01 1976m 16% 31328Mi 48%
gretel02 882m 7% 20904Mi 32%
gretel07 1617m 10% 27626Mi 21%
gretel08 2241m 14% 41597Mi 32%
gretel09 1145m 7% 28556Mi 22%
gretel10 1587m 9% 27677Mi 21%
gretel11 5257m 32% 40538Mi 31%
gretel13 681m 4% 64061Mi 49%
gretel14 944m 5% 26839Mi 20%
gretel15 1624m 10% 35381Mi 27%
gretel16 1876m 11% 29543Mi 22%
gretel17 2683m 16% 40151Mi 31%
gretel19 1813m 11% 25495Mi 19%
gretel20 1739m 10% 39069Mi 30%
gretel22 756m 4% 20475Mi 15%
gretel23 791m 4% 28535Mi 22%
gretel26 1452m 9% 24623Mi 19%
gretel27 1378m 8% 19278Mi 14%
gretel30 6652m 41% 31794Mi 49%
gretel31 2038m 12% 82366Mi 63%
gretel33 2047m 12% 30128Mi 46%
gretel37 3329m 20% 27933Mi 21%
hansel01 3332m 27% 49937Mi 77%
hansel02 2432m 20% 43139Mi 67%
hansel03 1523m 19% 32627Mi 50%
hansel13 2077m 25% 45012Mi 70%
hansel14 3078m 25% 43553Mi 67%
hansel15 1652m 13% 46544Mi 72%
hansel16 2741m 22% 42101Mi 65%
hansel17 1620m 13% 30437Mi 47%
hansel18 2203m 18% 40614Mi 63%
hansel19 6146m 51% 48192Mi 75%
hansel20 1712m 14% 25911Mi 40%
Last month's spikes on the contended nodes (hansels) turned out to be related to in-cluster backups, rather than tenant-driven load, and this misconfiguration was resolved. Hansel and Gretel traffic patterns are now more aligned to what you'd expect, comparing December to November:
Why Hansel & Gretel?
Bundles are datacenter-agnostic, but nodes are specific to each datacenter, and we needed a way to differentiate US nodes from DE nodes. The fairy tale of Hansel and Gretel originates in Germany 
Last month (Jan 2025)'s for comparison:
Retrospective
February saw the return of Comet (v2.0), renewed interested in "fediverse" social apps (GoToSocial and BlueSky PDS), and the introduction of another suite of media-management tools (SeerrBridge, ListSync)
Storage bug bites
A theoretically-harmless upgrade to our cluster's storage layer resulted in some users having their config volumes wiped, and we had a busy few days restoring from daily backups.
The troublesome upgrade was rolled back, and we've not yet re-attempted it (works fine in CI of course 
), but we'll probably take advantage of the US East Coast DC build (see below) to test it further, without risking further impact.
There's a possibility that applying the upgrade safely will require scaling down of all workloads beforehand, which will be a significant undertaking during a weekday glowup, and will need careful co-ordination.
Comet is back
After development initially petered out in Dec/Jan, Comet developer G0ldyy pushed hard in Feb and released v2.0 ("the rewrite").
In an indication of the growing maturity and interconnectedness of the Stremio Addon / Debrid ecosystem, Comet 2.0 relies on StremThru's crowdsourced database of cached hashes (since these are no longer available from RD/AD/DL), so the public (and private!) instances are used, the better the cache database becomes.
ElfHosted Comet users continue to enjoy perks such as:
- No rate-limits
- TorrentIO scraping
- Zilean DMM scraping (super-charged with Zyclops)
- Proxy-streaming support (64Mbps bundled, boostable)
- 33% of your subscription goes to the developer
Mooar apps
The following apps made their debut on ElfHosted during Feb 2025:
GoToSocial
Want to experiment with Mastodon, but not sure where to start?
GoToSocial is a lightweight, secure, and private ActivityPub social network server, your gateway to the larger Fediverse.
With GoToSocial, you can keep in touch with your friends, post, read, and share images and articles. All without being tracked or advertised to!
More details here, in this blog post, and on our Mastodon profile.
BlueSky PDS
Bluesky is an ambitious federated social network initially supported by Twitter, but is an independent public benefit corporation as of 2022 (Wikipedia)
The network is federated with the ATProtocol, which allows all participating users to communicate through a series of relays, whether their account is "on" the primary bsky.social server, or on their own, independently-managed data server instance.
A Personal Data Server (PDS) is a small server which is the "home" for one or more accounts, and serves to manage all their data storage, "distributing" the data separately from the other components of the network (relaying, scraping, etc), and giving users control of the presentation and storage of their data.
More details here, in this blog post, and in our BlueSky profile.
SeerrBridge
SeerrBridge is a clever implementation which bypasses the "classic" way of building an infinite streaming library (plex_debrid, Aars, or Riven), and simply uses a headless browser to interact directly with DebridMediaManager, fulfilling requests from Overseerr / Jellyseerr.
It's notably a cutting-edge, still-developing tool, but it's a workable alternative to the more complex stacks, with the advantage of having full access to the entirety of the DebridMediaManager database - something no other download stack can do!
More details here, and integrated bundles are available in the store - you could, for example, switch out a Riven stack for a SeerrBridge stack, with relatively very little friction.
ListSync
Many tools integrate with OverSeerr for the addition of content, but OverSeerr itself can't populate requests other than from users' Plex watchlists.
ListSync is a tool by the developer of SeerrBridge (you can see why they work, hand-in-hand), which will create Overseerr requests from a collection of upstream lists from IMDB, Trakt, or Letterboxd.
Useful everywhere Overseerr is used, but specifically in a SeerrBridge-managed stack, the importing of upstream lists would fully automate the creation of a library based on a combination of popular lists, such as Gary's top movies of the week.
More details here
US West Coast DC
During February, there was a period during which Hetzner was experiencing peering / throughput issues, and several of our US-based users successfully migrated their stacks over to the US West Coast (Washington State) DC.
A targeted email was sent out at the time to US users, but if you didn't receive an invitation, but the results from https://speed.elfhosted.com indicate that you'd be better off connected to the US, you could benefit from a relocation.
Coming up
US East Coast DC
Well. We have news. Here's where our PA DC will go:
And here's a wider shot:
It's tentatively looking as if we'll get an installation in 2-3 weeks, so ideally, look forward to the East Coast DC being featured in next month's report! 
Elf-illiate program matures
During January, we transitioned our (previously manual and dumb) developer contributions system to a more advanced "Elf-illiate" program, which allows us to calculate and pay out our participating open-source developers for a portion of subscription fees.
We expanded this rollout over February, finding a few bugs and configuration issues as we progressed.
Unlike the referral program, the affiliate program requires approval, but pays out directly in cash, as opposed to account credit. The idea is to encourage users with an "audience" (elf-influencers?) to spread the word about ElfHosted, in return for a percentage of commission on sales.
If you're interested in becoming "Elf-iliated", start your application here.
Even mooar apps
Apps currently requested can be found (and submitted!) here
Notable suggestions:
ElfGuides (ongoing)
We've made videos about how to drive our most popular setups, but given the tools and apps change so fast, the videos very often become out-of-date. Re-recording a video simply to address a change a single tool in a larger workflow can be tedious and time-consuming, so we've been exploring another option.
The "ElfGuides" are a collection of ScribeHow documents, assembled modularly from a collection of "Scribes" (screenshot-driven guides), which can be mix/matched up to provide a detailed guide per-stack (there are more than 30 variations now!). When a tool in the stack changes, updating the guides is just a matter of updating the individual "module" covering that tool.
If you've been a long-time Elfie, you'll not have seen any guides, but they're emailed to new subscribers as they start their subscription!
The most popular app stacks are covered in the ElfGuides currently, but given the variety / rate of change we face, the effort to maintain these is... ongoing.
Your ideas?
Got ideas for improvements? Send us an EEP (ElfHosted Enhancement Proposal) here!
How to help
Another effective way to help is to drive traffic / organic discovery, by mentioning ElfHosted in appropriate forums such as Reddit's r/plex, r/realdebrid, and r/StremioAddons, which is where much of our target audience is to be found!
Join us!
Want to get involved?
Want to get involved? Join us in Discord!
What users say..
Here's what some of our usersfriends say..
I am new here, but today I learned realized that Elfhosted is one of the best free and open source software communities I've seen, and FOSS communities have been at the center of my life since the 90s (Perl, PHP, Symfony, Drupal, Ethereum, etc.). Great open software built by great people who care = great community, and that is something special.
You've done an amazing job @Funky Penguelf with the platform you provide and this place has an awesome mix of active community caretakers and software creators that I've seen here so far like BSM, Spoked, LayeZee and other elf vengers. Keep up the energy, productivity and community and take time to enjoy it and appreciate each other!
@skwah (Discord)
I self host and share a fully automated ‘arr stack with Plex. Been doing so for around 4 years. Also recently got into real debrid and hosting a Comet and Annatar for Stremio. The amount of time and head banging I’ve put into it is in the hundreds to thousands of hours. From setting it up to keeping it running smoothly. Let’s not forget the cost of my server and how much it cost to keep it running.
Anyway I wanted to see what ElfHosted was about to compare. Yeah I had the whole thing setup in just a few hours. It also passes the headache of maintaining it to ElfHosted. Will I keep it no because nerdy things and maintaining my server are my hobby and quirky passion project. Will I recommend it to my friends who don’t have the money up front to buy a server, the knowledge to maintain it or desire.
Just my server alone was $2k. Power cost to keep it on yearly is $250ish, annual memberships to RD, Usenet and indexers are around $100. Then whatever a value my free time at. Which is currently at minimum my hourly pay at work or more. Yeah so take the monthly cost of all that and compare to ElfHosted Ultimate Stream package at $39 monthly, add RD to the cost and get nearly all your time back is incredibly cheap.
Lastly it seems like a lot of people forget how quickly an ultimate cable package used to cost. Or how quick paying for every stream service would add up to. Which when using ElfHosted with RD is essentially and more what you get. Quick hint it’s far above the asking price.
/u/MMag05. (Reddit)
As a happy Elfhosted customer—who also self hosts MANY things across about 10 severs (dedicated, VPSes, and VMs running on Synology), I wouldn’t switch to self hosting the services I get from Elfhosted. They just work with very little effort configuring things, and the support the owner and his team provides is second to none. Plus I love being part of a fledgling—but quickly growing—enterprise.
/u/jatguy. (Reddit)
I recently found ElfHosted and decided to start out with the Infinite Starter Kit. Within a week I realized that this was for me and upgraded to the Hobbit plan. Give it another week and I was up to the Ranger plan.
I just love the simplicity and the fact that things just work. For years I've ran a home server and between the constant maintenance and always upgrading harddrives, it became apparent I wanted to make it easier on my self. Enter ElfHosted.
Setup was super easy with the guided documentation and the discord community. It seems that somebody is available at all hours of the day to help with questions. I started with the Aars, which I knew from my prior hosting... but saw a newer product called Riven. I decided to jump in feet first. I enjoy being on the front end of an up and coming replacement for the Aars and will soon be upgrading to the annual plan!
@.theycallmebob. (Discord)
I’ve been using this service for a while now, and honestly, it’s a game-changer compared to anything else I’ve tried for managing my media library. The support is fantastic—super quick, and if the staff aren’t around (which rarely happens), the community steps up right away. I can’t imagine going back to any other platform.
Before this, I had my own setup with a NUC, NAS, and tools like Sonarr and Radarr. It worked pretty well for a while, and my internet speed was high enough to stream without any buffering. But in the end, it wasn’t worth the time or headache of managing all the storage and keeping everything running smoothly.
Now, with this service, everything runs smoothly in 1080p+ with no buffering issues. The interface is really easy to use, which makes managing everything a breeze. Plus, having a whole community of smart people available for guidance is a huge bonus.
I was sold from the start, which is why I quickly upgraded from a 1-month to a 3-month subscription, and I’m planning to switch to a 1-year plan soon. This service totally pays for itself, and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed. It’s been really impressive.
@seapound (Discord)
Best possible options for anyone looking for the do-it-all option along with the best customer service ive experienced in this space so far. Id rate it a 6 if I could but its limited to 5/5...
@hashmelters (Discord)
(responding to a Reddit thread re the cost of ElfHosted vs mainstream streaming / self-hosting):
I didn't know that the goal of this project was to compete with large companies running/renting entire DCs. I was under the impression that the goal of this project was to manage the updating of almost selfhosted applications on a shared platform with other users. Basically, be my sysadmin for me.
That being said, paying for services is the 'easy button'. There is a real world cost incurred for the time saved. Time is money. Time is the most valuable currency that exists. Once time is spent, it's forever lost, one cannot retrieve it again (yet). In my mind, there are 3 options for use of time with respect to: mainstream, selfhosting, elfhosted.
-
mainstream - my time is valuable and I don't want curated content and I don't care what content that I have the ability to consume. I only like what's popular.
-
elfhosted - my time is valuable, I want my own curated content without being forced to browse past the same damn entry 500 times just to find out that I can't watch the movie I want because it's not available in my current location or was removed last week from mainstream providers.
-
selfhost - I care about costs and I have nothing but time to waste or I want to learn about the backend of the systems involved. I'll pay for my own VPS/homelab, electricity, manage the OS, manage app updates, figure out how to make the apps talk nice to each other, create my own beautiful frontend.
I know how much my time is worth, does that reddit poster know how much their time is worth? Without knowing what you are worth, you can't make effective capital expenditures with respect to the time it will take to recoup the capital.
I know I don't need elfhosted at all for my use case. I choose to stay with elfhosted because it's my 'easy button'. It's an efficient capital expense for the amount of time it saves me managing my own hardware, apps and saves me electricity costs. I'm also in a situation where I don't have upload bandwidth from my home to serve HD content to myself remotely. If I lived back in a city, I would still be here. My time is worth $$/hr.
@cobra2 (Discord)
"Just wanted to check in here and let @Darth-Penguini and anyone/everyone else know...WOW. I have been struggling with storage for years, maintenance of Docker containers, upkeep, all of it. Elfhosted is so freeing. It's an amazing service that I hope to be a member of for a long, long time!"
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Now I essentially have the exact same access to content as I had before, but even better. Superior support and community involvement. Content is available almost immediately after being identified. A plethora of tools at my fingertips that give me more control and automation than ever before. Wonderfully well done and impressive! I am looking forward to being a customer for a very long time! Massive kudos to @funkypenguin 🤟
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Zestyclose_Teacher20 (Reddit)
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@tjelite (Discord)
"What an amazing support system these guys have Chris and Layzee i think it was! Both are very patient with me even though I am a newbie at all this. Very thorough and explained everything step by step with me
I couldn’t ask for anything better than the service I have received by these guys! Happy happy client❤️"
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@dead.potahto (Discord)
"@BSM went above and beyond to make sure I had all the one on one support needed with my sub. Thank you for your patience! Elfhosted continues to be Elftastic !!"
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@.mxrcy (Discord)