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Wallos: Self-Hosted Subscription Tracker to Stop Paying for Things You've Forgotten

Finance 2026-03-04 · 4 min read wallos subscription-tracker personal-finance self-hosted docker
By Selfhosted Guides Editorial Team — Self-hosting practitioners covering open source software, home lab infrastructure, and data sovereignty.

Subscription creep is real. Netflix, Spotify, Adobe Creative Cloud, a VPN, two or three SaaS tools, a cloud backup service — the average household now pays for 4-5 subscriptions they've forgotten about. The easiest way to stop this is to track them in one place.

Photo by Wai Yan Moe on Unsplash

Wallos is a lightweight, self-hosted subscription and personal finance tracker focused specifically on recurring payments. It gives you a complete list of your subscriptions, sends email reminders before renewals, and calculates your total monthly and yearly spend. No cloud account needed — runs entirely in Docker on your own server.

Wallos subscription tracker dashboard showing subscription list and monthly spend

What Wallos Tracks

For each subscription, you record:

From this data, Wallos generates:

Why Self-Host Instead of Using Apps Like Rocket Money

Commercial subscription trackers (Rocket Money, Truebill) connect directly to your bank accounts and credit cards to detect subscriptions automatically. This is convenient but involves sharing financial credentials with a third party.

Wallos takes the manual entry approach: you add subscriptions yourself. More work upfront, but:

For most people, manually adding 10-20 subscriptions takes 20 minutes and only needs updating when you sign up for something new.

Installation

Wallos requires Docker. The docker-compose.yml is straightforward:

services:
  wallos:
    image: bellamy/wallos:latest
    container_name: wallos
    ports:
      - "8282:80/tcp"
    environment:
      TZ: America/New_York
    volumes:
      - ./data:/var/www/html/db    # SQLite database
      - ./logos:/var/www/html/images/uploads/logos  # subscription logos
    restart: unless-stopped

docker compose up -d

Access at http://your-server:8282. On first load, you'll be prompted to create an admin account.

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Multi-Currency Support

Wallos supports any currency and handles multi-currency subscriptions with automatic conversion. You set a base currency (e.g., USD), and subscriptions in other currencies are converted using daily exchange rates from the Open Exchange Rates API (free tier available).

Configuration:

  1. Settings → Currency → Set base currency
  2. Settings → Currency → Add API key for exchange rates (or use manual rates)
  3. Each subscription can specify its own currency

This makes Wallos genuinely useful if you have subscriptions across multiple countries — a European SaaS billed in EUR, a UK streaming service in GBP, a US cloud backup in USD — all converted to your base currency for accurate totals.

Email Notifications

To get renewal reminders by email:

  1. Settings → Notifications → Enable Email
  2. Configure SMTP settings (Gmail, Fastmail, your own mail server)
  3. Set default notification lead time (e.g., 3 days before renewal)

Per-subscription notification settings can override the default. You can also disable notifications entirely for subscriptions you manage through the vendor's own reminders.

Example Gmail SMTP settings:

SMTP Host: smtp.gmail.com
SMTP Port: 587
SMTP Username: [email protected]
SMTP Password: [App Password — not your Gmail password]
From Address: [email protected]

For Gmail, you need to generate an App Password (Google Account → Security → 2-Step Verification → App passwords) rather than using your main password.

The Subscription Audit: A Practical Workflow

The most valuable thing you can do with Wallos is a one-time subscription audit:

  1. Pull your last 3 months of credit card and bank statements
  2. Look for any recurring charge — monthly, quarterly, or annual
  3. Add each one to Wallos — include the actual amount and billing date
  4. Review the total — your real monthly subscription spend is often surprising

Common subscription categories to check:

Once in Wallos, you get a clear view of what's costing you and can make informed decisions about what to cancel.

Wallos vs. Alternatives

Rocket Money / Truebill — Automatic detection via bank connection. Easier setup, more comprehensive detection. Privacy tradeoff: shares financial credentials.

Sub Club (iOS) — Beautiful mobile app for subscription tracking. iPhone-only, subscription-based ($0.99/month), cloud sync.

Subtrack — Simple iOS app. Limited compared to Wallos for power users.

Cuttly / custom spreadsheet — Spreadsheet-based tracking. No notifications, manual total calculations.

Wallos wins when you want: complete privacy, multi-currency support, email notifications without a cloud service, and a web UI accessible from any device on your network.

Reverse Proxy and HTTPS

For access via a domain name with HTTPS:

# Caddyfile
subs.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy wallos:80
}

Wallos doesn't handle HTTPS itself — run it behind Caddy, Nginx Proxy Manager, or Traefik.

Resource Requirements

Wallos is extremely lightweight. The Docker container uses:

It runs comfortably on a Raspberry Pi alongside dozens of other containers.

Conclusion

Wallos solves a real problem: subscription creep drains money from budgets silently. A self-hosted tracker that sends you an email three days before a $99/year renewal is more than worth the setup time.

The manual entry model means it's only as accurate as what you add — but that initial audit is valuable in itself. Most people who do a thorough subscription audit discover at least one or two services they're no longer using and can cancel immediately, paying for the setup in the first month.

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