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TRMNL alternatives that do not require buying hardware

TRMNL starts at $139 for its own e-ink screen. Here are two dashboards that run on a screen you already own, and what you would give up either way.

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TRMNL is a small e-ink screen you buy once: $139 for the OG model, $229 for the larger X model, plus an optional $5-a-month TRMNL+ subscription for a faster refresh rate and a few other extras. That price buys real hardware, an always-on display that needs no browser tab open and no computer running behind it, but it is still a purchase, and shipments of the X model to Europe and Asia were backlogged at the time of this check even as US, Canada and Australia orders shipped same day. Anyone who wants the same kind of glanceable information, a calendar, the weather, a stock price, without buying a new screen has a narrower set of real options: a personal dashboard that runs in a browser on hardware already sitting around.

In this roundup

What counts as an alternative here

Both entries below run on a screen, tablet or TV you already own, reachable from a plain browser with no TRMNL-style device to buy, checked directly against their own current pricing on 2026-10-24.

DAKboard

DAKboard is the closer match to what TRMNL itself sells to: a family calendar and photo screen that keeps itself current once it is set up. Point a smart TV's own browser, a Fire TV, an Android device, or Chromecast or AirPlay at a free DAKboard account, and it works with nothing bought from DAKboard at all. The free plan covers one predefined screen with two calendars, weather, news and photos, with DAKboard's own branding left on the display. Essential, at $5 a month billed annually, removes that branding and unlocks a fully custom layout. DAKboard also sells its own optional hardware, from a $24.95 pre-loaded Micro SD card up to a $699.95 Wall Display, for anyone who decides later they would rather not deal with a browser at all.

MagicMirror²

MagicMirror² is free and open source under the MIT license. Its traditional build pairs a Raspberry Pi with two-way mirror glass, but the software itself also runs on a Mac, a Windows PC or a Linux machine already sitting around, or headless in a documented server-only mode that any browser on the network can open, so a new Raspberry Pi is not actually required either. Seven modules ship by default, Clock, Calendar, Weather, News Feed, Compliments, Hello World and Alert, and a community gallery of 1,496 third-party modules covers much of what TRMNL's own plugin marketplace sells. The trade-off is setup: every module is added and tuned by hand-editing a JavaScript config file, with no settings screen at all, closer to a weekend project than something running in five minutes.

Glance

Glance is free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 license, run with Docker Compose or a pre-built binary on a machine or VPS you already have, no dedicated device required. Its widget list covers Weather, Clock, Calendar, Todo and Markets alongside RSS, Hacker News, Reddit and YouTube feeds, plus homelab widgets like Docker Containers and Server Stats for anyone who already runs a home server. One real limit: nothing refreshes in the background, so a widget updates on its own per-widget cache setting rather than on a live timer, closer to a page you reload than a display running unattended.