Modern software lives in the cloud. Cloud in a Bottle gives you your own part of it: a server you control, with apps that install in one click.
Runs on an old laptop, your own VPS, or rent one from us.
// why this exists
Most people access the cloud through companies whose incentives differ from theirs. Great software is easy to find or create, but where do you run it?
We built what we wanted and couldn't find: an "operating system" for your personal cloud, that makes web-native apps as easy to install as a smartphone app, on hardware that you control.
// the catalog
We've organized some great software into a catalog of apps that install in one click.
Not finding what you want? Add your own.
// your own apps
Anything that can run in a container can run here: existing open source apps, side projects, or all things that you made with Claude but are still stuck on your laptop. Same one-click install, just pointed at your own repo.
01
A cloudinabottle.toml telling us how to serve your app. And a Dockerfile if you don't already have one.
02
Paste it into your dashboard, or use our CLI. Your compute space clones the repo, builds the image, and starts the container.
bottle app deploy https://github.com/you/my-app
03
my-app.your-domain.com. No auth required in your app, it's visible only to you unless you decide otherwise.
04
One command pulls your changes and reloads
bottle app reload my-app --update
any repo + this file = an app
[app]
name = "my-app"
version = "0.1.0"
description = "the thing I made"
[runtime.container]
image = "Dockerfile"
port = 8080
[data]
sqlite = ["main"]
// get one
The software is the same. Choose whose machine runs it and how much setup you want.
01
An old laptop, a spare desktop, a Raspberry Pi. Runs directly on your machine or in a VM.
Free. It's your computer.
Read the install guide02
Rent a box from whoever you like, and turn it into your own personal cloud.
Just whatever your hosting provider charges.
Read the install guide03
The easiest and fastest way to get going is get an instance managed by our team at Imbue.
Paid, from Imbue.
From $5/mo, $10 starter credit.
// how it works
A Python service that routes requests, builds and runs app containers, and serves the management dashboard.
Every app runs in its own security sandbox - a minimum-capability container running as an unprivileged user, with any additional access requiring your explicit permission. You can feel safer trying out vibe-coded or untrusted third-party apps without giving them more access than they need.
Apps can expose or consume data from other apps via the service interface, a fully permissioned and dececentralized API for writing modular applications. Think Apple Health, but anyone can create the interfaces vs being stuck with whatever the platform defines.
App data and your instance's state is all legible and lives in one well organized directory on disk. You can export this anytime, no lock-in. A backup and migration app comes pre-loaded on every instance.
// the project
Cloud in a Bottle is in active development and licensed under AGPL-3.0. Issues and pull requests are welcome.