Cloud in a Bottle

Open-source personal-cloud platform that installs on an Ubuntu machine the owner supplies and runs containerized apps from a catalog, with a managed server sold by its maker Imbue.

cloudinabottle.orgpricingdocs

A personal cloud on one Ubuntu box.

Classification

Categories: Server management3
Operating system: Self-managed 4
Metal: You bring your own 3
Use cases: Side projects, Web apps, AI and LLM apps, Game servers 3
Audience: Solo and freelance 3

Tech stack

Runtimes: Docker, Anything 3
Software: Nextcloud, Vaultwarden 5
Shell: Root shell 4
Backups: Included7

Pricing

Entry price: $5 to $15 a month 8
Typical ceiling: $15 to $50 a month8
Currencies: USD 8
Billed: Monthly8
Free tier: Trial only8

38 of 58 fields not recorded yet

Reach, Favorite, Ownership, Parent, Status, Wikidata, Runs on, CDN from, Control panel, Specialised in, Managed databases, GPU, Persistent storage, Pricing model, Starting price, Paid, Exit, Money back, Renewal multiple, Minimum contract, Payment, DPA, Energy claim, Certifications, Green Web directory, Domain registration, DNS hosting, Email hosting, CDN, Test domain, Collaboration, Staging, Support, Hours, Tiering, Published SLA, MCP, Infrastructure as code

Cloud in a Bottle is an open-source personal-cloud platform, published under AGPL-3.0 and built by Imbue, an AI company in San Francisco. It installs on a freshly set up Ubuntu machine the owner supplies, whether a spare laptop, a home server or a rented VPS, and turns it into a dashboard that routes HTTPS requests to apps running as rootless Podman containers, each seeing only the data directories it asked for. Apps come from a curated catalog installed in one click, or from any git repository carrying a manifest file and a Dockerfile. Every route of every app sits behind the owner’s login unless the app declares a path public. A bundled backup app uses restic to send encrypted snapshots to storage the owner chooses, and a command-line tool with API tokens does what the dashboard does, including handing an instance to a coding agent.

Imbue also sells managed spaces: a dedicated server it provisions and keeps running, in three sizes priced by the month and billed only while the space is running, with a starting credit. The space is tied to the owner’s SSH key and can be moved to other hardware.

Identity

Founded: 20261
Headcount: 11 to 502

Deployment

Deployment: Git, Control panel 6

Regions and law

Headquarters: United States 2

Automation

CLI: Official9
API: Public10

Sources

2026-09-08: Founded, built by imbue
cloudinabottle.org/blog/launch-post
2026-09-08: Headcount, Headquarters
imbue.com/about
2026-09-08: Categories, Metal, Use cases, Audience, Runtimes
cloudinabottle.org/
2026-09-08: Operating system, Shell
cloudinabottle.org/docs/setup/cloud_instance.html
2026-09-08: Software
cloudinabottle.org/apps
2026-09-08: Deployment
cloudinabottle.org/docs/operation/overview.html
2026-09-08: Backups
cloudinabottle.org/docs/operation/backups.html
2026-09-08: Entry price, Typical ceiling, Currencies, Billed, Free tier
cloudinabottle.imbue.com/
2026-09-08: CLI
cloudinabottle.org/docs/operation/cli.html
2026-09-08: API
cloudinabottle.org/docs/how_it_works/overview.html

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Last reviewed 2026-09-08 · Listed since 2026-09-08Edit on GitHub This page as markdown

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