Nona - Open Source Firebase Remote Config Alternative

Self-hosted feature flags and remote configuration for web, mobile, and backend apps.

Nona gives you the same feature flag and remote config capabilities as Firebase Remote Config — without the Google account, without the lock-in, and running entirely on your own infrastructure.

• Toggle feature flags from a dashboard without redeploying
• Update mobile app config (iOS, Android, React Native, Flutter) without an app store release
• Use kill switches to disable broken features in seconds
• Fetch everything via one REST API call — no SDK required in any language

▶ Try the live demo

A real Nona instance with sample projects, environments and releases. You are signed in automatically as an administrator — no account, no install. Everything resets nightly, so change whatever you like.

🌐 nonaconfig.com  ·  🐳 Docker Hub  ·  📦 npm  ·  📦 NuGet

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Table of Contents

• Why We Open Sourced Nona
• Why Nona
• Quick Start
• Repository Layout
• Client Libraries
• API
• Docker Compose
• Migrate existing configuration
• Performance
• Architecture

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Why We Open Sourced Nona

Remote configuration is too often bundled with platform lock-in. We wanted teams to be able to change application behavior quickly without giving up control of their own infrastructure, data ownership, or platform choice.

Nona is our attempt to keep this part of the stack small and understandable: one Docker image, one HTTP API, official clients where they help, and a real migration path away from Firebase Remote Config. The longer story is here: Why we open sourced Nona.

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Why Nona

	Nona	Firebase Remote Config
Open source	✅ Apache 2.0 licence	❌ Closed source
Self-hostable	✅ Docker / Kubernetes	❌ Google-hosted only
No Google account	✅	❌ Required
Works without mobile SDK	✅ Plain HTTP	❌ Firebase SDK needed
.NET / NuGet client	✅	❌
Migration tool	✅ Built into CLI	—
Free forever	✅ Self-host	Free tier with limits

Nona runs as a single Docker container with SQLite in standalone mode and embedded libSQL when primary/replica replication is configured — no external database, separate control plane, or cloud dependency.

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Quick Start

Want to look around before installing anything? Try the live demo.

docker run -d \
  --name nona \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 18080:8080 \
  -v nona-data:/var/lib/nona \
  rywaredev/nona:latest

• Web UI: http://localhost:18080
• API base: http://localhost:18080
• Guided setup: https://nonaconfig.com/docs/get-started/

Create a project, add an environment, set your first key-value pair, and create an API key. Then fetch the working value:

curl "http://localhost:18080/api/environments/production/parameters/Features%3ACheckout" \
  -H "X-Api-Key: your-api-key"

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-Nona-Content-Type: boolean

true

The API key is bound to one project, so the request path only needs the environment and key. For a full walkthrough, start with First project and First API call.

If you are expecting LaunchDarkly-style evaluation, this is the key distinction: Nona reads are keyed by project, environment, scope, and key. There is no built-in runtime targeting, percentage rollout, or userId-based evaluation on the HTTP read path.

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Repository Layout

This repository is the Nona monorepo:

• core, cli, libsql, migrator: backend API, CLI, storage library, and migration tooling
• admin: admin web UI
• client: JavaScript SDK, .NET SDK, Kotlin/Android SDK, Swift SDK, and the OpenFeature providers
• docs: documentation site

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Client Libraries

JavaScript / Node.js / React Native

npm install nona-client

import { createNonaClient } from "nona-client";

const nona = createNonaClient({
  baseUrl: "https://nona.example.com",
  environmentId: "production",
  apiKey: process.env.NONA_API_KEY,
  useReleases: true,
  releaseVersion: "1.1.x"
});

const value = await nona.getConfigValue("Features:Checkout");
console.log(value.value);

📦 npmjs.com/package/nona-client

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.NET / C#

dotnet add package Nona.Client

using Nona.Client;

var client = new NonaClient("https://nona.example.com", "production", apiKey: "your-api-key");
var value = await client.GetConfigValueAsync("Features:Checkout");
Console.WriteLine(value.Value);

📦 nuget.org/packages/Nona.Client

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Swift / iOS

The Swift client supports CocoaPods and Swift Package Manager, with defaults, offline caching, and explicit fetch/activate. See client/swift/README.md for branch installation and usage.

Kotlin / Android

val config = NonaConfig.create(context, NonaOptions(
    baseUrl = "https://nona.example.com",
    environmentId = "production",
    apiKey = BuildConfig.NONA_FRONTEND_KEY
))

config.setDefaults(mapOf("Features:Checkout" to false))
config.initialize()       // restore the cached snapshot
config.fetchAndActivate() // refresh from the network

val enabled = config.getBoolean("Features:Checkout")

In-app defaults, separate fetch and activate, synchronous reads, and an offline cache that survives restarts. Usable from Java too, and needs a frontend-scoped API key. See client/kotlin/README.md.

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OpenFeature / JavaScript

npm install nona-client nona-openfeature-provider @openfeature/server-sdk

See client/javascript-openfeature-provider/README.md for setup and usage.

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OpenFeature / JavaScript in the browser

npm install nona-client nona-openfeature-web-provider @openfeature/web-sdk

Loads the environment's frontend-scoped config as one snapshot and evaluates synchronously, which is what the OpenFeature web SDK expects. Requires a frontend-scoped API key. See client/javascript-openfeature-web-provider/README.md for setup and usage.

---

Any language (plain HTTP)

No SDK needed. Choose the working, active-release, or selected-release route explicitly. The version is a path segment and may be exact or a release line:

# curl
curl "https://your-nona-host/api/environments/production/releases/1.1.x/parameters/Features%3ACheckout" \
  -H "X-Api-Key: your-api-key"

# Python
import httpx
value = httpx.get(
    "https://your-nona-host/api/environments/production/parameters/Features%3ACheckout",
    headers={"X-Api-Key": api_key}
).text

# Go
req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://your-nona-host/api/environments/production/parameters/Features%3ACheckout", nil)
req.Header.Set("X-Api-Key", apiKey)

The response body is the stored value. Nona also returns the logical type in the X-Nona-Content-Type response header.

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CLI (Windows / macOS / Linux)

# npm
npm install -g nona-cli

# Windows via Chocolatey
choco install nona-cli

Or download the binary from GitHub Releases.

CLI packages:

• npmjs.com/package/nona-cli
• community.chocolatey.org/packages/nona-cli

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API

Method	Path	Description
GET	/api/environments/{environmentId}/parameters/{key}	Fetch one working parameter
GET	/api/environments/{environmentId}/parameters	Fetch all client-visible working parameters with ETag support
GET	/api/environments/{environmentId}/releases/active/parameters/{key}	Fetch one parameter from the active release
GET	/api/environments/{environmentId}/releases/{version}/parameters/{key}	Fetch one parameter from an exact or wildcard release selector
GET	/api/environments/{environmentId}/releases/active/parameters	Fetch all client-visible parameters from the active release
GET	/api/environments/{environmentId}/releases/{version}/parameters?prefix=GroupA%3A	Fetch a prefix from an exact or wildcard release selector

Authentication: X-Api-Key request header.

Non-empty prefixes may contain only ASCII letters, digits, colons, dots, underscores, and dashes. Invalid prefixes return 400 Bad Request; an empty prefix is unfiltered.

The API key determines the project. The response body contains the raw stored value, and X-Nona-Content-Type tells the client whether the value is text, number, boolean, or json.

The API does not accept per-user evaluation context for runtime flag resolution. Query parameters or headers such as userId or X-User-Id are not part of the Nona read model.

See HTTP client docs for examples and troubleshooting.

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Docker Compose

Standalone

Copy deploy/compose/standalone-prod.yml to your server:

docker compose -f standalone-prod.yml up -d

Default host port: http://localhost:18080

Variable	Default	Description
NONA_API_PORT	18080	Host port mapped to the API
Jwt__Key	auto-generated	JWT signing key
Jwt__Issuer	nona	JWT issuer claim
Jwt__Audience	nona	JWT audience claim

Primary / Replica

For read-heavy workloads or geographically distributed deployments, use deploy/compose/primary-replica-prod.yml:

docker compose -f primary-replica-prod.yml up -d

Service	API port	libSQL port	gRPC port
nona-primary	18081	internal only	internal only
nona-replica	18082	internal only	—

The replication compose files publish only the Nona API. SQL HTTP and replication gRPC stay on the private container network; Nona authentication does not protect these database listeners.

The replica connects to the primary over gRPC and syncs automatically.

JWT Settings

Nona auto-generates JWT settings on first start. To pin your own values:

docker run -d \
  --name nona \
  -p 18080:8080 \
  -v nona-data:/var/lib/nona \
  -e Jwt__Key=<your-secret-key> \
  -e Jwt__Issuer=nona \
  -e Jwt__Audience=nona \
  rywaredev/nona:latest

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Migrate existing configuration

The Nona CLI includes a built-in Firebase Remote Config migration command that imports your existing parameters using a migration config file.

# Install CLI
choco install nona-cli

# Run migration
nona migrate firebase \
  --config ./nona.migration.json \
  --base-url http://localhost:18080

See cli/src/Nona.Cli/README.md for the full CLI reference.

The CLI can also import AWS Parameter Store String values referenced by an ECS task definition:

nona migrate parameter-store \
  --task-definition ./task-definition.json \
  --environment production \
  --project backend-service \
  --dry-run

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Performance

The following results measure full runtime API reads using SQLite. "Users" means concurrent, closed-loop HTTP clients.

Full environment

Each request used GET /api/environments/{environment}/parameters and consumed the complete response body.

Keys returned	Users	Average (ms)	p50 (ms)	p95 (ms)	p99 (ms)	req/s
1	1	0.731	0.725	0.812	0.930	1,361.6
1	50	5.950	5.658	8.763	11.522	8,397.7
100	1	1.351	1.314	1.537	2.043	738.6
100	50	7.723	6.812	12.451	23.230	6,469.5

Single key

Each request used GET /api/environments/{environment}/parameters/{key} to read one fixed key from an environment containing 10,000 keys.

Keys returned	Users	Average (ms)	p50 (ms)	p95 (ms)	p99 (ms)	req/s
1	1	0.664	0.644	0.749	1.410	1,501.2
1	50	5.250	4.900	7.969	13.302	9,516.8
1	100	10.189	9.884	15.238	21.706	9,804.9

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Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Nona Container (rywaredev/nona)    │
│                                     │
│  ┌──────────┐   ┌─────────────────┐ │
│  │ Web UI   │   │   HTTP API      │ │
│  │ :8080    │   │   :8080         │ │
│  └──────────┘   └─────────┬───────┘ │
│                           │         │
│                  ┌────────▼────────┐│
│                  │ SQLite / libSQL ││
│                  │  /var/lib/nona  ││
│                  └─────────────────┘│
└─────────────────────────────────────┘

• No external database — standalone uses SQLite; sqld is bundled for primary/replica mode
• Single port — API and Web UI share port 8080
• Persistent volume — mount /var/lib/nona to survive container restarts
• Optional replica — add a read replica with the primary/replica compose file

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Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. See the issues tracker to report bugs or request features.

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Licence

Apache 2.0 — free to use, self-host, and modify.

Built by Ryware.dev