Everything Lunaris handles.
How Lunaris compares, the work it handles for you, why it runs so well on a Mac, and how your library stays yours.
Lunaris vs. doing it yourself vs. renting forever
| Lunaris | DIY arr-stack | Streaming subscriptions | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup | LunarisOne click, minutes | DIY45+ min of Docker and config files | StreamingSign up, but you own nothing |
| Upkeep | LunarisSelf-healing, runs unattended | DIYYou're the on-call engineer | StreamingTheir problem, and their rules |
| You own the library | LunarisYes, on your drive | DIYYes, if you keep it alive | StreamingNo, ever |
| Content sticks around | LunarisUntil you delete it | DIYUntil something breaks | StreamingUntil the contract expires |
| Privacy | LunarisVPN on, with a kill switch | DIYIf you set it up right | StreamingThey track everything |
| Cost over time | LunarisPay once | DIYFree, plus your weekends | Streaming$15–80/mo, forever, going up |
Weighing this against Plex's paid tier? Lunaris vs. Plex Pass covers what each one does and the math after the 2026 price change.
All the upside of your own server. None of the upkeep.
Running your own media server usually turns into a second job: the install, the constant updates, the one service that breaks whenever something upstream changes.
Lunaris does the whole thing end to end, install through maintenance, so it never lands on your plate. You pick what to watch. It keeps everything running.
Built for the Mac you already own.
Every media-server guide assumes you're on Linux, a NAS, or a Raspberry Pi. Your Mac is a better server than any of them. Lunaris is the only app that installs the whole stack natively on it and keeps it running.
Apple Silicon was built for this
VideoToolbox does hardware transcoding out of the box. A base Mac mini handles several 4K streams at once on about 20 watts. Intel Macs run Lunaris too (it's a universal app); Apple Silicon just makes it look easy.
It stays up on its own
Macs sleep, drop volumes on restart, and have no real service manager for this. Lunaris handles sleep, mount timing, and auto-start, so the server doesn't quietly die at 2am.
No cloud, no account
Lunaris runs entirely on your Mac. No Lunaris account, no telemetry, no cloud middleman. The server and your library live on your machine, not someone else's.
A real Mac app
An app you download and open, not a script you paste into a terminal. No Docker Desktop eating 4GB of memory, no plist files to hand-edit.
How the AI connection works.
On the rare day something does go wrong, you shouldn't be the one digging through logs. Point the AI you already use at Lunaris and it sees your whole setup, finds what broke, and fixes it. In the app today, not on a roadmap.
Works with any MCP client
Lunaris ships as an MCP server. Claude Desktop connects today; so does anything else that speaks the Model Context Protocol. Setup is pasting one snippet.
It looks, then it fixes
Your AI reads the same live status and logs the dashboard shows, explains what broke, and can restart the stuck service — then tells you what it did.
Local, scrubbed, and fenced
The connection runs on your Mac — no port, no token, no network surface. Secrets are redacted before the AI sees a log line, and its one power is a data-safe restart. It can never touch your media.
It's yours. All of it.
Lunaris runs entirely on your Mac. You bought an app once, and the server is yours to keep. Your library lives on your own drive, not in someone else's cloud.
Streaming rents you access and changes the terms whenever it wants. Own your library and none of that touches you.
It lives on your drive
The library is on your Mac, not someone else's cloud. Nothing gets pulled because a licensing deal expired or a show quietly disappeared.
No bill that creeps up
Pay for the app once. No monthly fee that climbs every January, no ads, no “not available in your region.”
Nobody's watching
Downloads route through a VPN by default. There's no account harvesting your watch history to sell you things. You're not the product here.
Stop babysitting your media server.
Start owning it.
Lunaris is out. $29 one-time for the first 100 founders, downloading a minute from now.