How much RAM does Navidrome need? We measured: 47 MB idle
Navidrome (music streaming server) used 47 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 47 MB idle you can comfortably co-host Navidrome with several other small apps on a single 1 GB instance.
What the vendors say
Navidrome's own docs are honest: they call it lightweight and suitable for a Raspberry Pi. Hosting-provider guides still commonly recommend 1–2 GB VPS plans for it.
What changes under load
Memory grows during library scans and with very large libraries (100k+ tracks). Transcoding spawns ffmpeg, which adds CPU load more than RAM.
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), Gotify (20 MB), ntfy (27 MB), PocketBase (31 MB), Caddy (40 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)