How much RAM does Gotify need? We measured: 20 MB idle
Gotify (self-hosted push notifications) used 20 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)
20 MB means Gotify is a rounding error next to anything else you run — put it on the box you already have.
What the vendors say
Gotify advertises itself as lightweight and it genuinely is; most tutorials still park it on a 1 GB droplet of its own.
What changes under load
Memory tracks the number of held WebSocket connections. A handful of devices is noise; thousands of subscribers is a different conversation.
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
File Browser (16 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)