The XDA story about the Raspberry Pi fridge that pings its owner when the beer count drops has been passed around every homelab community this month. It hits the same nerve as smart-plug energy monitors did a few years back: the data is there, the sensors are cheap, so why is the software still a spreadsheet? A pantry that tells you when the coffee bag is nearly empty, a fridge that flags the yoghurt going off tomorrow, a drinks cabinet that reorders the tonic on schedule. None of it needs a startup or a subscription.
We tested seven of the best apps for tracking pantry and beverage inventory at home in 2026. The brief was self-hosting first: Docker containers, offline-capable web apps, and one paid cloud option for people who genuinely do not want another Pi in the house.
What to look for in a pantry inventory app
Five things separate a pantry app you keep for a year from one you abandon after a week:
- Barcode scanning that works with a phone camera. Manual entry kills these apps. A browser-based scanner or a companion mobile app that talks to your server is the difference between logging groceries in five minutes and never logging them at all.
- Locations, not just categories. Fridge, freezer, pantry, garage shelf, drinks cabinet. Real households store the same product in two places.
- Expiry and min-stock alerts. Push notifications or email when a product hits its use-by date or drops below the threshold you set for it.
- A shopping list that talks to the inventory. Consume a product, it lands on the list. Buy it, it clears.
- Runs on hardware you already own. A Raspberry Pi 4, an old NUC, or a NAS with Docker. Nothing that forces you into a $20-a-month cloud plan.
Quick comparison
| App | Best for | Platforms | Free plan | Starting price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grocy | Full pantry ERP with chores and batteries | Docker on Windows, macOS, Linux | Fully free, open source | Free |
| Mealie | Recipe-first pantry with shopping lists | Docker on any OS | Fully free, open source | Free |
| KitchenOwl | Household shopping list plus pantry | Docker on any OS | Fully free, open source | Free |
| Tandoor Recipes | Meal planning that generates the list | Docker on any OS | Fully free, open source | Free |
| Home Assistant + Grocy | Dashboards, automations, notifications | Docker or HAOS on any OS | Free, open source | Free |
| HomeBox | General home inventory adapted for pantry | Docker on any OS | Free, open source | Free |
| Sortly | Cloud pantry inventory, no server to run | Web app on any OS | 100 items, 1 user | $49 per month for barcode scanning |
The apps
1. Grocy — Best for full self-hosted pantry ERP
Grocy is the reference implementation for home pantry management. The tagline “ERP beyond your fridge” is unusually honest: it tracks products, stock, locations, quantity units, purchase and consumption history, meal plans, shopping lists, recipes, chores, batteries, and equipment. The barcode workflow uses either the browser camera or a companion Android and iOS app called Grocy Mobile.
The 2026 release track added a task view for chores and an experimental Apple Intelligence hook that guesses a product’s category, location, and unit from the name during a scan. It is written in PHP, runs on SQLite by default, and sits comfortably on a Raspberry Pi.
Where it falls short: The learning curve is real. Setting up quantity conversions (a kilogram of flour is 4 cups, a case of beer is 24 bottles) takes an evening of clicking before it starts saving you time.
Pricing: Free, MIT licensed.
Platforms: Docker container that runs on any Windows, macOS, or Linux host. Companion mobile apps on Android and iOS.
Download: Grocy · Grocy on GitHub
Bottom line: The app to reach for when you want the full household database, not just a shopping list.
2. Mealie — Best for a recipe-first pantry
Mealie starts from recipes and grows outward into inventory. Import a URL from most cooking sites, save it, and the ingredients feed a shopping list and a lightweight pantry view. Version 3.x introduced households, so a family can share meal plans without sharing every list. The REST API is documented and mature, which matters if you want to wire it into Home Assistant or a Discord bot.
The pantry inside Mealie is deliberately simpler than Grocy’s. You mark ingredients as “on hand”, plan a week of meals, and the shopping list subtracts what you already have.
Where it falls short: No native fridge or freezer locations, no expiry alerts. If you want granular stock levels for tonic water and salt, Mealie will feel light.
Pricing: Free, AGPL-3.0 licensed.
Platforms: Docker on Windows, macOS, or Linux. Web UI in any browser. Mobile PWA works offline for the shopping list.
Download: Mealie · Mealie on GitHub
Bottom line: Pick this if the recipe library is the point and the pantry is the by-product.
3. KitchenOwl — Best for household shopping list plus pantry
KitchenOwl is the lightest of the self-hosted options. Backend in Flask, frontend in Flutter, single Docker container, SQLite database, and mobile apps on Android, iOS, and desktop. It focuses on the collaborative shopping list first: two people at home, both editing the same list in real time, offline-friendly on the walk to the shop.
Pantry, recipes, expense tracking, and meal planning sit on top of the same data model. Native desktop clients for Windows, macOS, and Linux are a nice touch when you would rather not open a browser tab for the shopping list.
Where it falls short: Recipe importing is functional but less polished than Mealie or Tandoor. No barcode scanning inside the web app yet. The mobile clients handle it.
Pricing: Free, AGPL-3.0 licensed.
Platforms: Docker on any host. Native Windows, macOS, and Linux desktop apps. Android on Google Play and F-Droid, iOS via TestFlight.
Download: KitchenOwl · KitchenOwl on GitHub
Bottom line: The one to install if the shopping list is the pain point and everything else is a bonus.
4. Tandoor Recipes — Best for meal planning that drives the list
Tandoor Recipes is the meal-planner half of the self-hosted trio with Grocy and Mealie. Recipes import from thousands of sites in one click, meal plans sit on a weekly calendar, and shopping lists are generated from the plan with duplicate ingredients merged and items grouped by supermarket aisle. Recent releases added OpenFoodFacts nutrition data, barcode scanning, and a three-container Docker deployment.
The permission system is fine for a household but not designed for a public server. Full-text search with trigram similarity means “chikken” still finds your chicken recipes.
Where it falls short: Pantry-level stock tracking is less first-class than in Grocy. Tandoor knows a recipe uses 200 g of pasta, not that you have 800 g on the shelf.
Pricing: Free, AGPL-3.0 licensed. Optional hosted plan for people who want to skip Docker.
Platforms: Docker on Windows, macOS, or Linux. Web UI in any browser.
Download: Tandoor · Tandoor Recipes on GitHub
Bottom line: The strongest option if the week’s meals decide what the shopping list looks like.
5. Home Assistant with the Grocy integration — Best for dashboards and automations
Home Assistant does not track pantry inventory on its own, but paired with the community Grocy integration it turns the whole setup into something the rest of the household actually notices. The integration exposes a sensor for chores, meal plan, shopping list, stock, tasks, and batteries, plus binary sensors for overdue, expired, expiring, and missing products.
That means a hallway tablet showing this week’s meals, a kitchen speaker announcing what expires tomorrow, and a phone notification the moment the beer sensor on your fridge drops below three cans. The Kitchen Card and Grocy Chores custom Lovelace cards make the dashboard side straightforward.
Where it falls short: Only useful if you already run Home Assistant or plan to. HACS installation for the custom integration adds a step that catches beginners.
Pricing: Free, Apache 2.0 licensed. Optional Nabu Casa Cloud subscription for remote access.
Platforms: HAOS on a Raspberry Pi, NUC, or virtual machine. Docker container on Windows, macOS, or Linux.
Download: Home Assistant · Grocy custom integration
Bottom line: The layer that turns your pantry data into something the smart home acts on.
6. HomeBox — Best for general home inventory adapted for pantry
HomeBox is not a dedicated pantry tracker, but it is the friendliest general-purpose inventory app to bend into one. Written in Go, single binary, runs under 50 MB of RAM, ships as a Docker container, uses SQLite by default with a PostgreSQL option for larger installs. Locations, labels, photos, warranties, receipts, and a QR-code label generator.
For a drinks cabinet or a chest freezer treated as an asset list rather than a stock system, HomeBox is faster to set up than Grocy and easier to explain to the rest of the household. Attach a photo of the bottle, put a QR sticker on the shelf, done.
Where it falls short: No meal plans, no recipe integration, no expiry-based shopping list. You get an inventory, not a kitchen manager.
Pricing: Free, AGPL-3.0 licensed.
Platforms: Docker on Windows, macOS, or Linux. Runs happily on a Raspberry Pi.
Download: HomeBox · HomeBox on GitHub
Bottom line: The right choice for the drinks cabinet and freezer if a recipe database would be overkill.
7. Sortly — Best for a cloud option with no server to run
Sortly is the only paid cloud entry on this list, included for people who read the six options above and thought “I do not want another container.” It is a general home and small-business inventory app with photos, QR labels, custom fields, low-stock alerts, and a barcode scanner in the mobile app. The web dashboard runs in any desktop browser.
The free tier caps at 100 unique items and one user, which is enough to prove whether the pantry-in-an-app concept fits your habits before you commit.
Where it falls short: Barcode and QR scanning inside the app are locked to the Advanced plan and above, which starts at $49 per month. Data lives in Sortly’s cloud, so this is the opposite of self-hosted.
Pricing: Free tier (100 items, 1 user). Advanced at $49 per month adds barcode scanning and 500 items. Higher tiers scale up user count and item limits.
Platforms: Web app on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Native mobile apps on Android and iOS.
Download: Sortly
Bottom line: The cloud escape hatch if the Docker options are a bridge too far.
How to pick the right one
If you want the full ERP treatment and are prepared to spend an evening setting up quantity units, pick Grocy. Nothing else on the list matches its depth of stock, chores, batteries, and meal plans in one place. Pair it with Home Assistant if you want the dashboards, notifications, and automations that turn “pantry data” into “the household actually uses it.”
If the recipe library is the reason you are doing this, pick Mealie or Tandoor Recipes. Mealie is a little easier to run, Tandoor has stronger meal planning and shopping-list generation. Either one keeps the pantry side deliberately light, and that is a feature.
If a shared shopping list is 80 percent of the problem, pick KitchenOwl. Two phones editing the same list at the same time, real-time sync, native desktop apps if you want them.
If the drinks cabinet, chest freezer, or bulk-buy shelf is what you actually want catalogued, HomeBox is faster to set up than any recipe-first tool.
If Docker is a non-starter, Sortly’s free tier is a low-effort way to test the concept, with a clear path to the paid plans if it sticks.
FAQ
Can any of these track individual beverages the way that XDA Raspberry Pi fridge did?
Yes, in different ways. Grocy paired with Home Assistant is the closest match: model each bottle or can as a product with a minimum stock level, expose the stock sensor to Home Assistant, and trigger a notification when it drops. A weight sensor under the shelf reporting to Home Assistant closes the loop the same way the XDA build does, without the custom hardware.
Do these apps work fully offline?
Grocy, Mealie, KitchenOwl, Tandoor, and HomeBox all run on your local network with no internet dependency once installed. The mobile apps for KitchenOwl and Mealie sync when they get a connection and hold the shopping list offline in between. Sortly requires an internet connection because the data lives in its cloud.
Do I need a Raspberry Pi or can I use my desktop?
Any always-on machine works. Docker on a Windows or macOS desktop is fine, but the machine has to stay on for the household to reach the app. A Raspberry Pi 4, an old laptop with the lid closed, a NAS, or a mini PC costs less to run 24/7 than leaving a desktop awake.
What is the difference between Grocy and Home Assistant’s own shopping list?
Home Assistant’s built-in shopping list is a flat list of strings with no product database, no stock levels, and no expiry dates. Grocy is a full inventory system that the Home Assistant integration exposes as sensors. Use both together: Grocy for the data, Home Assistant for the automations that act on it.
How do I get barcodes into these apps without a dedicated scanner?
Every option here supports phone-camera scanning, either through a native mobile app (Grocy, KitchenOwl, Sortly) or the browser’s camera API on a phone pointed at the web UI (Mealie, Tandoor, HomeBox). Most also accept a USB barcode scanner that types the code as a keyboard, if you want a dedicated pantry terminal.
Are any of these safe to expose to the internet?
Grocy and HomeBox have permission systems designed for a household, not a public server. Tandoor’s docs explicitly warn against running it as a public page. If you want remote access, put any of these behind a reverse proxy with authentication, a VPN like WireGuard or Tailscale, or Home Assistant’s Nabu Casa Cloud tunnel. Do not expose them directly on port 80 or 443.
