Support Lyftr
Lyftr is free and open source under the MIT license. You can run it on your own hardware, keep your data in a single SQLite file, and there is no subscription.
If Lyftr is useful to you, here are the ways to help — the free ones matter more than you’d think.
Free ways to help
Section titled “Free ways to help”Report a bug. A reproducible bug report is worth more than a donation. Include what
you did, what happened, and what you expected — plus your deployment (Docker or local dev)
and the relevant lines from docker compose logs.
Star the repo. It is how other self-hosters find the project.
Write something down. If a doc page was wrong, unclear, or missing the one detail you
needed, fixing it helps the next person hit the same wall. Docs live in site/ and a typo
fix is a perfectly good first pull request.
Contribute code. Setup and conventions are in CONTRIBUTING.md, and the test layout is in docs/TESTING.md. Open an issue before large changes.
Tell someone. Most people who self-host Lyftr found it because another self-hoster mentioned it.
Funding it
Section titled “Funding it”Lyftr is built by one person outside of a full-time job. Sponsorship covers the running costs and the developer accounts Lyftr needs to reach more platforms.
What the money actually pays for
Section titled “What the money actually pays for”| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Live demo hosting (lyftr-demo.fly.dev, always-on) | ~$4/month |
| Apple Developer Program | $99/year — currently what blocks an iOS build |
| Google Play developer account | $25 one-time |
| Domain | ~$15/year |
Documentation hosting, CI, and Android builds run on free tiers and cost nothing.
The iOS app is the honest headline: it is blocked on a $99/year account, not on the code.