How much RAM does File Browser need? We measured: 16 MB idle
File Browser (web file manager) used 16 MB of RAM across 1 process sitting idle with default configuration — measured by us, on real hardware, not copied from another blog. Runtime: Single Go binary (embedded SQLite)
At 16 MB this is the cheapest app we have measured — it is effectively free to co-host alongside anything else on this list.
What the vendors say
File Browser's docs give no RAM figure at all. Generic 'file server VPS' guides routinely start at 2 GB, which is roughly 100x what it needs at idle.
What changes under load
Idle cost is trivial; what matters is transfer. Large uploads and directory listings of huge trees push memory up transiently, and disk I/O, not RAM, becomes the limit.
Methodology
Each app was started with its default configuration and an empty data directory, left to settle for 25–30 seconds, and confirmed alive with an HTTP request to its web interface. We then recorded the resident set size (RSS) of the app's entire process tree via ps. Apps were run directly on the host (no Docker), so numbers exclude container overhead (~10–30 MB with Docker).
A fresh minimal Ubuntu 24.04 VPS typically idles at roughly 200–300 MB RSS (kernel, systemd, sshd, journald). All 'fits on' verdicts below assume ~300 MB reserved for the OS.
Where to run it
A 512 MB instance from Hetzner, Vultr or DigitalOcean covers this app with the OS overhead included. Don't pay for RAM the measurements say you won't use.
Other apps we measured
Gotify (20 MB), ntfy (27 MB), PocketBase (31 MB), Caddy (40 MB), Navidrome (47 MB), Syncthing (57 MB), Prometheus (70 MB), MinIO (132 MB), Uptime Kuma (136 MB), Gitea (158 MB), Forgejo (173 MB), code-server (VS Code in the browser) (191 MB)