Frigate

Frigate is a self-hosted network video recorder for IP cameras with realtime local object detection. It is designed for homelab and Home Assistant users who want camera recording, review, alerts, and event filtering processed on infrastructure they control instead of relying entirely on a cloud camera service.

Why people choose Frigate

Frigate focuses detection work where it matters: low-overhead motion detection narrows the frames sent to object detection, and recordings can be retained around detected objects. This helps users review people, vehicles, and other events rather than continuously scanning every frame manually.

What is included

The official docs cover live view, review items, media browsing, notifications, object tracking, zones, event-based recording retention, RTSP restreaming, WebRTC camera connections, MQTT, Home Assistant integration, and optional recommended detectors such as Coral or GPU-backed hardware.

Requirements and tradeoffs

Frigate runs as a Docker container and stores its configuration, SQLite database, recordings, clips, exports, and caches in separate paths. The docs recommend Docker on bare-metal Debian-based systems for best hardware access; CPU detection is mainly for testing, and detector choice, camera resolution, shared memory, storage retention, and hardware passthrough affect the result. MQTT is optional for standalone use but required for the Home Assistant integration.

Best fit

Choose Frigate when local camera processing and event-focused NVR features matter more than a simple cloud camera app. If you need a turnkey recorder with minimal hardware tuning, or your cameras cannot provide compatible streams, a conventional NVR may be easier.