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

🌐 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 from Firebase Remote Config
• 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

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, publish a release, and set it active. Then fetch the value:

curl "http://localhost:18080/api/production/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, and JavaScript OpenFeature provider
• 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,
  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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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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Any language (plain HTTP)

No SDK needed. A single GET request returns one config value from the environment's active release, or from a pinned release version:

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

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

# Go
req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET", "https://your-nona-host/api/production/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/{environmentId}/{key}	Fetch one key from the active release
GET	/api/{environmentId}/{key}?version=1.1.0	Fetch one key from an exact release
GET	/api/{environmentId}/{key}?version=1.1.x	Fetch one key from the highest patch in a release line
GET	/api/{environmentId}	Fetch all client-visible keys with ETag support

Authentication: X-Api-Key request header.

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	19080	15001
nona-replica	18082	19082	—

The replica connects to the primary over gRPC and syncs automatically. Reads served from the replica are 10–15× faster for remote clients (see Performance).

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 from Firebase Remote Config

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.

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Performance

All measurements from production-equivalent environments.

Single-node (SQLite local)

Dataset: 10,000 rows, p95 latency:

Scenario	p95 (ms)	req/s
Point lookup — 1 key	0.154	11,248
Point lookup — 100 keys	0.712	1,616
Range query — 1,000 rows	3.703	289

All targets pass with 0% error rate under load.

Primary / Replica (remote client)

Scenario	Primary p95	Replica p95
1 key, c1	50.0 ms	2.6 ms
100 keys, c1	56.8 ms	6.6 ms
1,000 rows, c1	263.2 ms	42.9 ms

Replica reads are 10–15× faster for geographically distant clients.

Note: Replication is asynchronous. Immediate read-after-write consistency is not guaranteed — replicas are best for read-heavy workloads where eventual consistency is acceptable.

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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