What is MolnOS?

MolnOS is a complete, self-hosted cloud control plane reduced to microscale. It’s infrastructure you can actually own, control, and run almost anywhere—without subscriptions, vendor lock-in, or external runtime dependencies.

The Core Concept

Think of MolnOS as “cloud computing at human scale.” While hyperscalers offer thousands of services across global data centers, MolnOS provides the essential cloud primitives you actually need, packaged into a single portable system you can understand, control, and deploy on your own terms.

At just ~430KB in size, MolnOS runs on hardware ranging from a $10 Raspberry Pi Zero to enterprise servers, making sophisticated cloud infrastructure accessible to individuals, small teams, and organizations that need full (and coincidentally, sovereign) control over their systems.

What’s Included

MolnOS is batteries-included with core cloud services:

• Identity & Access Management (IAM): User and service account management with role-based access control and fine-grained permissions
• Functions: Serverless JavaScript functions with service bindings and security scoping
• Storage: S3-like object storage with bucket management and hierarchical navigation
• Databases: Fast key-value database built on PikoDB with TTL and dictionary grouping
• Applications: Use Application Registrations to allow secure access to apps running on MolnOS
• Observability: Centralized logging with flexible querying and retention management
• Infrastructure as Code: Declarative resource management via molnos.json—define your entire infrastructure in one file

Key Characteristics

Microscale

MolnOS is intentionally small. The entire system is just a tiny set of files (totaling ~430KB). It’s a design philosophy that prioritizes clarity, efficiency, and portability over feature bloat.

Self-Hosted

You run MolnOS wherever you choose: on-premises servers, edge devices, personal hardware, or even embedded systems. No external cloud provider is required. No remote control planes are called. It’s simply your infrastructure, under your control.

Sovereign

With MolnOS, you can freely choose to own your infrastructure or run it on a VPS or even on another cloud. There’s no ongoing subscription, no vendor that can change pricing or terms, no dependency on external services (except for sending emails, if you choose to use email-based passwordless sign-in). Purchase once, own forever. Your data stays where you put it.

Portable

MolnOS runs on macOS and Linux with Node.js 24+. Deploy it on ARM or x86, in containers or bare metal, on powerful servers or constrained edge devices. The same system works everywhere.

Integrated

Unlike assembling disparate open-source tools, MolnOS provides an integrated experience. IAM, app auth, compute, storage, databases, and logging work together out of the box with a unified permission model and consistent API.

Who Is MolnOS For?

Developers and Small Teams

Build and deploy complete applications without managing complex infrastructure or paying for enterprise cloud services. MolnOS gives you production-grade primitives at a scale you can understand and maintain.

Edge and IoT Deployments

Run cloud infrastructure close to your sensors, devices, or data sources. MolnOS’s tiny footprint and resource efficiency make it viable for edge computing scenarios where traditional clouds don’t reach.

Organizations Requiring Data Sovereignty

When regulatory requirements, security policies, or business needs demand complete control over where data lives and who can access it, MolnOS provides a genuine alternative to public clouds.

Privacy-Conscious Projects

Keep sensitive data under your control. With MolnOS, there’s no third-party cloud provider in the data path, no telemetry, no external runtime dependencies.

Constrained Environments

Deploy in air-gapped networks, bandwidth-limited locations, or scenarios where external cloud connectivity is unreliable or unavailable.

Education and Learning

Understand how cloud infrastructure actually works by running it yourself. MolnOS is small enough to comprehend but feature-complete enough to build real applications.

What MolnOS Is Not

MolnOS is not trying to replace AWS, Azure, or GCP for workloads that need global scale, managed ML services, or hundreds of specialized offerings. It’s not a Kubernetes distribution, not a full Linux distribution, and not a managed service.

MolnOS is focused: it provides core cloud primitives at a scale appropriate for individuals, teams, and organizations that value ownership, simplicity, and sovereignty over “infinite” scalability and managed complexity.

The Value Proposition

One-Time Purchase

Pay once for commercial use as long as you want (for the purchased major version, e.g. version 1.x). No monthly fees, no per-user pricing, no capacity limits. The software is yours to use indefinitely.

No External Dependencies

MolnOS doesn’t “phone home”, doesn’t require external services, and doesn’t send telemetry. Once installed, it’s fully self-contained.

Understandable Scale

Unlike sprawling cloud platforms with thousands of services, MolnOS is comprehensible. You can understand what it does, how it works, and how to operate it without a dedicated team.

Real Portability

Move your entire infrastructure by moving a just a few files and the data directory. Deploy to new hardware, migrate between environments, or create identical dev/staging/production setups trivially.

Freedom from Vendor Lock-In

No vendor-specific integrations and no commercial leverage over your infrastructure. You own it, you control it, you keep it.

Getting Started

MolnOS can be installed on macOS or Linux systems with Node.js 24 or later.

Install via npm (easiest, available since version 1.0.3):

npm install -g molnos

Or install via the CLI installer (includes additional CLI tooling):

curl -sSL https://releases.molnos.cloud/install.sh | bash

Within minutes, you’ll have a complete cloud control plane running locally, ready to deploy functions, store objects, manage data, and build applications—all without leaving your machine.

Use Cases

From personal projects to edge deployments to sovereign infrastructure, MolnOS enables scenarios where traditional clouds are too expensive, too complex, or simply not an option.

Whether you’re building a SaaS application on your own terms, deploying compute to remote locations, or just want to understand how cloud infrastructure works without the abstraction layers, MolnOS provides the primitives you need at a scale you can easily manage.

Ready to explore what you can build? See Use Cases for detailed scenarios and implementation patterns.