About Ikaros
Ikaros is a self-hosted personal digital content platform, described as dedicated to the content management of ACGMN, meaning anime, comics, games, music and novels. It is written in Java and aims to bring scattered media files under one system.
Its features are unified resource management so everything is managed in one place, metadata support so collections with romanized names remain understandable, fast search that stays responsive with hundreds of thousands of items, a plugin system in which the core provides only basic functions and extras come from plugins, and clients for major platforms such as Windows and Android. Documentation is at docs.ikaros.run, and the README and project materials are mainly in Chinese.
Ikaros is licensed under AGPL-3.0. The disclaimer says it is a tool for individuals to manage their own resources, similar to a client-server file manager, is for personal use only, and that exposing it to the public internet is not recommended.
Key features
- Unified management of media resources
- Metadata support for collections
- Fast search over large libraries
- Plugin system for extra features
- Clients for Windows and Android
- Self-hosted Java server
Good fit for
- →Organizing a personal anime and music library
- →Searching a large local media collection
- Built with
- Java
- Tags
- cms
- media-library
- self-hosted
- java
- anime
- plugins
- metadata
- personal-cloud
Ikaros: questions and answers
- What is Ikaros used for?
- Ikaros is a self-hosted personal content platform for managing anime, comics, games, music and novel collections with metadata, search and plugins. It is a good fit for organizing a personal anime and music library, and searching a large local media collection.
- Is Ikaros open source?
- Yes. Ikaros is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at ikaros-dev/ikaros and is written mainly in Java.
- Is Ikaros free?
- Yes. Ikaros is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
- Can I self-host Ikaros?
- Yes. Ikaros can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
- What are some alternatives to Ikaros?
- Similar open-source tools in the Media & Streaming category include Beets, MediaCMS and Yamtrack. SaaS products in the same category include Roon, Bilibili and Channels DVR.
- Is Ikaros actively maintained?
- Yes. The most recent commit to Ikaros was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v1.2.5, published on 22 August 2026. The project has 624 stars on GitHub.
Open-source alternatives to Ikaros
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Beets
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MediaCMS
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MediaCMS is a modern, fully featured open source video and media CMS, written in Python/Dj
AGPL-3.0vs Vimeo★ 5.1kYamtrack
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A self hosted media tracker.
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Unmanic
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Xibo Digital Signage
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GPL-2.0vs Plex★ 58k
SaaS alternatives to Ikaros
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Roon
Media & Streaming
Music player and library manager for high-quality audio
SaaS
Bilibili
Media & Streaming
Chinese video-sharing platform focused on anime, games and user content
SaaS
Channels DVR
Media & Streaming
Self-hosted live TV and DVR software for tuners and TV Everywhere sources
SaaS
Crunchyroll
Media & Streaming
Subscription streaming service focused on anime series and films
SaaS
Emby
Media & Streaming
Personal media server that streams your own movies, shows and music to any device
SaaS
Infuse
Media & Streaming
Video player for Apple devices that plays files from servers and NAS drives
SaaS

