SSHush vs Quartermaster
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
SSHush
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3am. Your phone is face down in a drawer, on battery, in Low Power Mode. /var crosses 95%. You get woken up. That sentence is the entire product, and it is harder to deliver than it looks. An alert computed on your phone can only fire when iOS chooses to wake your phone, and iOS makes no guarantee that it ever will. Background execution is throttled on battery, suspended in Low Power Mode, stopped completely by a force quit, and starved hardest overnight - precisely when you need it. Worse, it fails in silence. You see your thresholds configured and you assume you are covered. TWO SYSTEMS, DELIBERATELY SEPARATE Live metrics come from your phone's own SSH session. Open the app, it connects, you see the server as it is right now. Alerting is a different system entirely. A small agent runs on your server and reports outward on its own schedule, independently of your phone. It does not care whether the app is open, backgrounded, force-quit or deleted from your home screen. A threshold breach originates on the server and arrives as a real push notification. If a server card shows as offline, that describes your phone's SSH connection. It says nothing about your alerting, which is still running. Your server speaks. Your phone listens. Nothing in between. Everything a monitoring platform does about a crossed threshold. None of the platform. No dashboard to host. No port to expose. No domain, no reverse proxy, no account. No platform sitting between your servers and you. No other iOS app does this. Every alternative either computes its alerts on the phone, which iOS can throttle or stop without telling you, or asks you to stand up and secure a dashboard of your own, or routes you through a monitoring platform with an account and a seat. FREE, AND NOT A TRIAL Unlimited servers. Full metrics. No agent, no account, no signup. Per-core CPU, temperature, memory, swap, disk by mount, load average, network interfaces. A full SSH terminal. Your servers sync across your devices through iCloud. This tier is agentless and always will be. Nothing is installed on anything. ALERTING, AS A SUBSCRIPTION Enable it on a server and the app installs the agent over the SSH connection you already have. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to go and look at afterwards. Rules are configured in the app: CPU, memory, swap, disk per mount point, load average, temperature, interface down. And silence. If the agent stops reporting, you hear about it - the failure a monitoring system exists to catch, and the one a check on your phone can never see, because a sleeping phone and a dead server look identical from the inside. Every rule fires on sustained breach, not on a momentary spike. READ EVERY LINE BEFORE YOU INSTALL IT Alerting asks something real of you: a binary, on your server. You should not agree to that on trust. The agent is open source, Apache 2.0. github.com/ultra-nick/sshush-agent It runs as an unprivileged user, never as root, under systemd restrictions that make your filesystem read-only to it apart from one directory. It never listens on a port. It never executes a remote command. It never downloads anything, ever. Its whole network footprint is two URLs you can read in a config file. Metrics are sampled and rules evaluated on your server. Only a crossed threshold is ever sent. The numbers never leave the machine. Nothing else is touched. No package manager integration, no cron entry, no existing file modified. One command removes it completely, or the app asks it to remove itself. Your SSH credentials never leave your device. They live in your iCloud Keychain. Our infrastructure has never held an SSH credential and is not built to. Monitoring is free, unlimited and agentless. Alerting is there when silence stops being acceptable. --- Requirements: iOS 26.0 or later. iCloud syncs your servers and alert history across your devices. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Quartermaster
Manage your self-hosted media and home infrastructure from a single, native iOS application. Browse, request, and monitor your entertainment stack, alongside servers, containers, and smart home devices. Offers a private, direct connection to your services without any cloud intermediaries.
- Unified media management
- Server and container monitoring
- Automated network switching
- Diagnostic tools
- Customizable interface
- Private notifications
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Quartermaster is a native iOS control centre for your self-hosted stack. Browse your library, request films and shows, watch what is downloading and control your servers from one app on iPhone, iPad and Apple silicon Mac. Entertainment brings your media servers, arr apps and downloaders together. Command Centre puts your servers, containers, network, storage and smart home within reach. KEY FEATURES - Your media, connected. Discover films and shows, request them through Seerr, manage titles in Radarr and Sonarr, and follow downloads into your library. Pro routing rules send requests to the right server. - Browse and watch. Now Playing, Continue Watching, Next Up and Recently Added for Jellyfin, Emby and Plex. Play films and episodes in the app, with audio and subtitle selection, AirPlay and Picture in Picture. - Know your library. See upcoming releases in a unified calendar, explore library statistics and discover your Taste Profile, calculated on your device. - Take control. Manage Docker containers and virtual machines, check NAS and drive health, control DNS blocking and inspect network devices. Read live stats and logs, control Home Assistant by room, and use a full SSH terminal with saved commands. - The Doctor. Find the cause of stalled downloads and blocked imports in plain English, with suggested fixes you can review and apply. - Home and away. Add local and remote addresses and let Quartermaster switch as your network changes. Keep different setups in separate profiles and use optional encrypted iCloud sync across your devices. - Family and friends. Give your household a simpler way to browse and request, with owner controls protected by a PIN. Pro is needed to create a Family setup; joining does not require another purchase. - QM Companion. Scan to import discovered services from your own Companion server. Pro adds live views of containers, stacks, volumes and updates, with controls governed by the permissions you approve. - Stay informed. Choose alerts for imports, failures, requests and server thresholds, plus a daily release digest. - Make it yours. Choose icons and accent colours, arrange your tabs and Home shortcuts, add a one-handed corner button, and use light or true black dark mode. Explore with realistic sample data before connecting anything. SUPPORTED SERVICES Media: Radarr, Sonarr, Lidarr, Jellyseerr, Overseerr, Seerr, DroppedNeedle, Shelfarr, ReadMeABook, Prowlarr, Jackett, NZBHydra2, Bazarr, SABnzbd, NZBGet, qBittorrent, Transmission, Deluge, qui, Jellyfin, Emby, Plex, Tautulli, Jellystat, Streamystats, Tracearr, Maintainerr, Wizarr, Tdarr, Dispatcharr, Immich, Audiobookshelf, Shelfmark, BookOrbit, Komga and Kavita. Infrastructure: Portainer, Dockhand, Komodo, Coolify, Arcane, Glances, Beszel, Scrutiny, Dozzle, Unraid, TrueNAS, Synology DSM, UGREEN NAS, Proxmox VE, Home Assistant, AdGuard Home, Pi-hole, Technitium, NextDNS, Control D, UniFi, Gluetun, Cloudflare, CrowdSec and SSH. PRIVATE BY DESIGN Quartermaster connects directly to your services. Credentials are protected in the system Keychain, and no Quartermaster account is required. Optional iCloud sync and backups encrypt your setup with your passphrase. Push notifications use an optional relay, or connect your own ntfy server for instant alerts. Apple and RevenueCat handle purchase validation. QUARTERMASTER PRO Use one service for free. Unlock unlimited services and all Pro features with a one-time lifetime purchase, an annual subscription or a monthly subscription. No feature tiers or add-ons. Available in English, French, Spanish and German. You need your own servers or service accounts. Quartermaster does not supply media and is not affiliated with the services it supports. Website: https://qmstack.com Support: https://qmstack.com/support Privacy Policy: https://www.qmstack.com/privacy Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Quartermaster at 16.4 against SSHush's 26.0. On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. SSHush sells 14 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month and Quartermaster sells 5 in-app purchases, starting at $4.99 per month. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
SSHush ships an update every 10 days, Quartermaster every 2 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 8, 2026 and October 14, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | SSHush | Quartermaster |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | — | 5.0 (42 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | — | 92.6% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | — | 42 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 10 days — better | Every 2 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | — | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 16.4 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 20 MB | 106 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Nicholas Webster | Lewis Egley |
In-app purchases
SSHush
- 1 Server$1.991 Month
- 2 Servers$3.991 Month
- 5 Servers$5.991 Month
Show 11 moreShow fewer
- 10 Servers$9.991 Month
- 15 Servers$11.991 Month
- 6 Servers$12.001 Month
- 7 Servers$14.001 Month
- 25 Servers$14.991 Month
- 8 Servers$16.001 Month
- 9 Servers$18.001 Month
- 11 Servers$22.001 Month
- 12 Servers$24.001 Month
- 50 Servers$24.991 Month
- 14 Servers$28.001 Month
Quartermaster
- Quartermaster Pro (Monthly)$4.991 Month
- Pro Monthly7 Days trial$4.991 Month
- Continued Support2 variants$9.991 Month
Show 1 moreShow fewer
- Pro Annual$19.991 Year
- Quartermaster Pro$29.99









