Ditch the Ring subscription—open-source Frigate keeps your security cameras smart, free, and local

Published Jul 18, 2026, 1:00 PM EDT Adam has a degree in Engineering and has a life-long interest in technology. He has been writing for over a decade for various print and online publications, with a focus on consumer tech. He joined How-To Geek in 2024 while working at Pocket-lint. As well as being a long-term fan of Apple products, he also has a strong interest in smart home tech, running a Home Assistant server at home to automate all his smart home devices. He believes that the ideal smart home should work with minimal interaction from the user, with automations running as if by magic rather than requiring you to push buttons on a control panel. You can find more of his work on Muck Rack. Ring video doorbells are a popular choice as they're relatively affordable and simple to set up and use. The problem is that to use the best features of a Ring doorbell, such as accessing your video history, you need to pay for a subscription. If you don't want to keep paying to use a device you already bought, there is another option. Frigate can turn an old computer into an NVR An AI accelerator can take on the hard work Credit: Coral Frigate is free and open-source Network Video Recorder (NVR) software. The streams from your video cameras are passed over the local network to Frigate, which can both store and analyze the video. It has built-in AI object detection that can identify people, vehicles, animals, and more without sending any data to the cloud. You can run the software on modest hardware, such as an old PC, a mini PC, or a small server. You don't necessarily need powerful hardware, but hardware-accelerated video decoding and an AI accelerator for object detection are recommended. You can use an AI accelerator to handle object detection, freeing up CPU and improving detection speed. A Coral TPU is one option, although Frigate no longer recommends Coral devices for most new installations. If your computer is powerful enough, you don't need to use an AI accelerator at all. I run Frigate on an old Dell Optiplex PC, and despite the older hardware, using a Coral TPU gives fast object detection. Beelink S13 PRO CPU Celeron FCBGA1264 3.6GHz Graphics Integrated Intel Graphics 24EUs 1000MHz The Beelink Mini S13 Pro desktop PC is a ultra-compact computer powered by the Intel N150 processor. Shipping with 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a 500GB SSD, this micro desktop is perfect for a variety of workloads. From running simple server programs to replacing your old PC, the Beelink S13 Pro is up to the task. Running Frigate can save you money No more monthly subscription fees One of the biggest benefits of switching to using Frigate is that you don't need to pay a subscription fee. There is a paid option called Frigate+ that lets you train customised detection models to improve accuracy for your specific cameras. For most people, the free features are more than adequate. Ditching a monthly Ring subscription can save you about $5 per month at a minimumm, but using Frigate does have upfront hardware costs if you don't already have what you need. You can buy a new AI accelerator for about $75, although you may be able to find a used one for less on second-hand marketplaces. I run Frigate on an old PC that my dad was no longer using, and I got my Coral TPU second hand for $20. It meant that after only four months of using Frigate, I had broken even and could start saving money on my Ring subscription. Your Ring camera won't work natively A local-only video doorbell is a better option Credit: Ring If you already own a Ring camera, there's a significant catch. Frigate requires a compatible video stream from the camera, and Ring cameras don't provide a native local stream that Frigate can use. This isn't a limitation of Frigate as much as it's a limitation of Ring's cloud-centric ecosystem. By default, you're not going to be able to hook up your Ring camera to Frigate and ditch your subscription. If you're sick of Ring and want to move on, you can replace your Ring doorbell with a model that can work completely locally. Reolink's Wi-Fi or PoE video doorbells are popular models. You can install microSD cards directly into the doorbells for local recording, and they provide native RTSP streams that integrate cleanly with Frigate. I use a combination of a Reolink doorbell and Frigate, and it gives me an even better experience for free than I was getting when I was paying for a Ring subscription. I no longer have to worry about my video recordings ending up on third-party servers or being automatically analyzed by Ring to help find lost dogs. All my videos are stored locally, and accessing the recordings when motion is detected is even easier than using Ring. You can still use your Ring doorbell at a push You'll need something else to rebroadcast the stream If you really don't want to buy a new doorbell just to get rid of your Ring subscription, there is a workaround, although it's far from perfect. You can use another service to access the Ring doorbell’s cloud stream and rebroadcast it as an RTSP stream that Frigate can use, although the resulting feed may not be as reliable as a native local stream. There are options such as Scrypted that can do the job. While some users have had success with this setup, it adds an extra layer of complexity, so it's probably best to use as a temporary measure rather than a permanent solution. It might be enough to keep you going until you decide to replace your Ring device. Make your video doorbell your own Ring offers convenience, but it comes at a price. It's not just the financial cost of a subscription, but also the loss of your privacy. Frigate can give you many of the features of a Ring subscription, and it can run completely locally.