Obtainium pulls app releases straight from their source: GitHub, GitLab, Forgejo, F-Droid repos, IzzyOnDroid, and a growing list of other hosts. You point it at a project’s release page and it monitors for new versions, then installs the APK directly. No intermediary app store sits between you and the developer’s signed binary.
Obtainium
obtainium.imranr.dev
Our take
The appeal here is provenance: you are installing exactly what the developer published, not a repackaged or delayed copy. That makes Obtainium a strong complement to F-Droid for apps that publish their own signed APKs but do not yet have an F-Droid listing. The honest catch is setup friction: each app requires a manual configuration, and some sources use web scraping that breaks when the upstream page changes. If you are comfortable curating your own app list, Obtainium gives you finer control over your update chain than any traditional store; if you want a one-tap catalog experience, it is the wrong tool.
GitHub at a glance
ImranR98/Obtainium
Stars
17,749
Last commit
2mo ago
healthy
License
GPL-3.0
Latest release
v1.4.3
2mo ago
Listed in
Obtainium alternatives
F-Droid Catalog and installer for free and open-source Android apps, no Google account required.
Aurora Store Open-source Google Play client that lets you download apps anonymously without a Google account.
Accrescent Security-focused Android app store with signing key pinning and signed repository metadata.
Obtainium license, in plain English
GPL-3.0 Strong copyleft
Free to use and modify, but anything you distribute that is built on it must also be open under the same license.
Permits
- Commercial use
- Modification
- Distribution
- Patent use
- Private use
Requires
- Disclose source
- Same license
- State changes
- License and copyright notice
Does not provide
- Liability cover
- Warranty
Why it matters: Strong copyleft keeps every distributed version open. A vendor cannot fold this into a closed product and ship it without releasing their changes.
Plain-language summary of the project's license, not legal advice. Read the full text for the exact terms.