Bento: the office suite in a single file

What Bento is

Bento is an office suite that ships as a single HTML file. You download one file, open it in any modern browser, and that file is both the editor and the document. There is no installer and no account. It is MIT licensed, the source is at github.com/nyblnet/bento, and the first shipping release appeared on 21 July 2026. Writing on 1 August 2026 that makes it under two weeks old, which is the most important fact in this post and the reason the last section is about evaluation rather than migration.

What "fits in a single file" really means

A self-hosted office suite is normally a stack. Nextcloud is PHP behind a web server, with a database, a cache and a background job runner. The editor is a second service beside it, Collabora Online or ONLYOFFICE Docs, usually in its own container, which the browser talks to over HTTP. The document lives in a filesystem and a database row, and the editing session lives inside the editor service.

Bento removes the stack. The download is Bento_Slides.bento.html, about 571 KB in release v1.0.11 (27 July 2026). Inside that one file are:

• the editor, which is also the viewer
• the presentation runtime that shows the deck full screen
• the fonts and images the deck uses, embedded
• the document itself, as a readable JSON block near the top of the file

Saving is the unusual part. The file rewrites its own data block. The page asks the browser for write access through the File System Access API (a browser interface that lets a page write back to a file the user picked), and on browsers without that API you get a download instead. Editing a deck produces a new copy of the same self-contained file. Nothing is uploaded, because there is nothing to upload to.

That is the detail people get wrong when they hear "single file". It is not one server binary running your office suite as a single process on your VPS. There is no process at all. The runtime is the browser, so a VPS, if you use one, serves a static file and nothing else.

What the Bento office suite ships today

"Office suite" is the project's ambition and not yet its inventory. One application exists: bento/slides, a presentation editor. The roadmap names bento/spaces for notes, bento/dash for sheets and tables, and bento/vault, each planned as its own self-contained .bento.html file. If you need a word processor or a spreadsheet today, Bento does not have one.

Release pace is high. v1.0.6 on 21 July 2026 was the first shipping build and v1.0.11 arrived on 27 July 2026, six releases in seven days. That is a good sign about the maintainers and a warning about the software. Anything moving that fast is still finding its bugs, and the release notes read that way: fixes for large text crashing live collaboration, for stylesheet duplication in saved files, for chart baselines on negative values.

Why one file suits a small VPS

Publishing a deck means copying a file into a directory your web server already serves. There is nothing to orchestrate, no container to keep running, no database to migrate on upgrade. Compare that with the editor services, using each vendor's own published minimums:

[
  {
    "label": "bento/slides (no backend)",
    "min_ram_mb": 0
  },
  {
    "label": "Collabora Online CODE",
    "min_ram_mb": 1024
  },
  {
    "label": "ONLYOFFICE Docs, Debian package",
    "min_ram_mb": 2048
  },
  {
    "label": "ONLYOFFICE Docs, Docker",
    "min_ram_mb": 4096
  }
]

Those are vendor-published minimums as of August 2026, not numbers measured on a running box. Collabora publishes 1 GB for the system plus roughly 50 MB per user, so 1024 MB is the floor before your first user connects. ONLYOFFICE Docs asks for 2048 MB from the Debian package and 4096 MB in Docker, plus 4 GB of swap and 40 GB of disk. Bento's editing backend needs 0 MB because there is no editing backend. Underneath either editor service you are still running Nextcloud itself with its database and cache, so on a 2 GB VPS this gap decides what else you can host.

Backups get simpler in the same way. Restoring Nextcloud means restoring files and a database that agree with each other, at the same point in time. Restoring a Bento deck means restoring one file. It still deserves a real backup with history, because the editor rewrites the file in place and an in-place write is a write that can go wrong: a scheduled restic snapshot of that directory covers it.

There is one optional server component. Live collaboration uses what the project calls a blind relay, and it is self-hostable from server/sync-worker/ in the repository. Documents are encrypted in the browser with AES-GCM (Galois/Counter Mode, an authenticated encryption mode), the room key never leaves the file, and the relay holds ciphertext, connection timing and a hash of that key. Editing on your own needs no relay.

What you give up against Nextcloud and Collabora

Access control is the largest gap. In Bento the collaboration key is created with the document and lives inside the file, so possession of the file is membership of the session. Rotating the key is how you revoke someone. That model has no accounts, no groups, no single sign-on and no audit trail. Nextcloud gives you users, share links with expiry dates, quotas, server-side version history and mobile clients. If two people need different levels of access to the same document, Bento cannot express that.

Format interoperability is the second gap. Bento stores its own JSON, which is exactly why the file is readable and why a script can edit it. Collabora and ONLYOFFICE exist to round-trip OOXML (the .docx and .pptx family) with high fidelity, because that is the format the rest of the world will send you. Check the release notes for what the version you downloaded imports and exports before you build a workflow that assumes PowerPoint compatibility.

Maturity is the third. The project documents its own rough edges plainly, which is a point in its favour. Undo during live collaboration is snapshot based and can revert a collaborator's concurrent edit to the same property. Editing is desktop first, and phones view and present better than they edit. The save-as menu does not fit on a phone screen yet. Those are the known limitations at v1.0.11. At two weeks old there are unknown ones.

Should you trust real documents to it?

Split the question by what the document needs. A conference talk, a sales deck or a lecture you want to open again in ten years is a good fit, because the file carries its own editor and does not need the project to still exist in 2036. A contract with three reviewers, a retention policy and a named approver is not a good fit, because that document needs accounts and server-side history.

Two practical guards. Keep decks in version control or in a backup with history, since a file that rewrites itself on save can also be corrupted on save and you will want yesterday's copy. And treat a .bento.html from someone you do not know as a program rather than a document, because that is what it is: a web page with a full application inside it. Open it the way you would open any untrusted web page.

The automation story is genuinely useful and worth naming. Because the document is plain JSON inside the file, a coding agent can edit a .bento.html in place, and the project ships a Claude Code skill for that. It works with local open-weight models too, so a box already running Ollama to serve your own model can draft slides without sending anything off the machine.

Where Bento fits on a small server

Bento belongs with the other single-purpose tools that earn a place on a small VPS by staying small: a self-hosted RSS reader or Actual Budget for personal finance. One job, a small footprint, data you can read without the application. People replacing their notes app with one of the self-hosted Notion alternatives are making the same trade, and the wider guide to what to self-host covers the rest of that list.

If you need the full document platform with users, sharing and version history, Nextcloud on a VPS with Docker, TLS and backups is still the answer. Bento is not competing for that slot. It is the thing you send to someone outside your server, as one file that opens for them with no login and no plugin.

FAQ

Is Bento a replacement for Nextcloud and Collabora?

Not for the same job. Nextcloud with Collabora or ONLYOFFICE gives you accounts, shared folders, permissions and server-side version history, and it needs a real server stack to provide them. Bento gives you one portable file that opens anywhere and needs no server. Use Bento when the document should be self-contained. Use the Nextcloud stack when several people need different access to the same document over time.

Does Bento need a server or a VPS?

No. A .bento.html file opens from local disk in any modern browser and edits offline. A VPS matters for two optional things: serving the file over HTTPS so other people can download it, and running the sync relay for live collaboration. The relay is self-hostable from server/sync-worker/ in the project repository and stores ciphertext plus connection metadata, so it never sees your content.

What format does Bento save documents in?

Its own JSON, written as a readable block near the top of the HTML file, with fonts and images embedded alongside. Open the file in a text editor and you can read the document structure, which is why scripts and AI agents can edit a deck in place. It also means the stored format is not OOXML, so do not assume a .pptx workflow will survive until you have tested import and export in the release you are running.

How does collaboration work if there are no user accounts?

The collaboration key is minted when the document is created and lives inside the file, so whoever holds the file can join the session. Edits merge with a CRDT (conflict-free replicated data type, a structure that merges concurrent changes without a central authority) and travel encrypted with AES-GCM. Presence names are claims and not proofs, so read the participant list as a label rather than an identity check. Revoking access means rotating the key and redistributing the file.

Is Bento ready for important documents?

It is MIT licensed and developed in the open, and it was under two weeks old on 1 August 2026, with six releases in its first week. Treat it as software you evaluate this month, not software you standardise on this quarter. Keep every deck in a backup with history, test the export path you depend on before you depend on it, and keep anything with a compliance or retention requirement in a system that has accounts and version history.