Best Open Source Alternatives to AWS S3 2026

TL;DR

MinIO entered maintenance mode in late 2025 after removing its web UI from the community edition and restricting core features to enterprise licenses. The best replacements depend on your use case: SeaweedFS for most production workloads (Apache 2.0, 30K stars, S3-compatible), Garage for geo-distributed multi-site setups (Rust, minimal resources), and Ceph RGW for enterprise-scale infrastructure (battle-tested, complex). AWS S3 itself remains the easiest option — this guide is for teams committed to self-hosting.

Key Takeaways

• MinIO went into maintenance mode (Dec 2025) after removing the web UI and key features from the community edition
• SeaweedFS is the top open source alternative for most teams — Apache 2.0, Go, ~30K stars, proven at scale
• Garage is purpose-built for geo-distributed self-hosting on modest hardware — ideal for 3+ nodes across locations
• Ceph RGW is the enterprise choice — battle-tested at petabyte scale, but operationally complex
• RustFS is an emerging Rust-based MinIO replacement — promising but newer
• All support the S3 API — your existing aws-sdk code, Boto3, or @aws-sdk/client-s3 works without modification

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What Happened to MinIO?

MinIO was the undisputed leader in self-hosted S3-compatible storage from 2016 to 2024. Then a series of decisions eroded its open source standing:

1. 2021: Switched from Apache 2.0 to AGPLv3 license — commercial use now requires a paid license or code disclosure
2. June 2025: Removed the web console (admin UI) from community edition — bucket management, lifecycle policies, and account administration became enterprise-only
3. December 2025: GitHub repo entered maintenance mode — no new features, no pull requests, security fixes case-by-case only

This is a familiar pattern (HashiCorp, Elastic, MongoDB, Redis all followed the same trajectory). MinIO is still usable, but relying on it for new infrastructure is a risk.

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Comparison Overview

Project	Language	License	Stars	S3 Compat.	Best For
SeaweedFS	Go	Apache 2.0	~23K	Good	Most production workloads
Garage	Rust	AGPL 3.0	~4K	Core ops	Geo-distributed, low-resource
Ceph RGW	C++	LGPL 2.1	~14K	Excellent	Enterprise / petabyte scale
RustFS	Rust	Apache 2.0	~4K	Good	MinIO drop-in (newer)
MinIO (legacy)	Go	AGPL 3.0	~53K	Excellent	(maintenance mode — avoid for new)

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SeaweedFS: The Best All-Around Alternative

SeaweedFS is a distributed file system that was built from the ground up for scalable object storage. It predates much of the "S3-alternative" wave and has earned its ~23,000 GitHub stars through real production deployments.

Why SeaweedFS

• Apache 2.0 license — no AGPL complexity, use freely in commercial products
• Written in Go — easy to build and operate, good performance
• S3-compatible gateway built-in — point your aws-sdk at it and it just works
• Scales horizontally — add volume servers as storage grows
• Handles both small and large files efficiently (a MinIO weakness)
• Active development — not going into maintenance mode

Architecture

SeaweedFS has three components:

Master Server (metadata)  →  Volume Servers (data)  →  Filer (S3 gateway)

For most self-hosters, a single-server deployment works fine:

# Start SeaweedFS on a single server:
docker run -d \
  -p 9333:9333 \  # Master HTTP
  -p 9334:9334 \  # Master gRPC
  -p 8080:8080 \  # Volume server
  -p 8888:8888 \  # Filer (S3 gateway)
  -v /data/seaweedfs:/data \
  chrislusf/seaweedfs:latest server \
  -dir=/data \
  -s3 \
  -s3.port=8333 \
  -s3.allowEmptyFolder=false

S3 API Compatibility

// Works with standard AWS SDK — just change the endpoint:
import { S3Client, PutObjectCommand } from '@aws-sdk/client-s3';

const s3 = new S3Client({
  endpoint: 'http://your-server:8333',
  region: 'us-east-1',  // Required but unused
  credentials: {
    accessKeyId: 'your-access-key',
    secretAccessKey: 'your-secret-key',
  },
  forcePathStyle: true,  // Required for non-AWS S3
});

// Works exactly like AWS S3:
await s3.send(new PutObjectCommand({
  Bucket: 'my-bucket',
  Key: 'files/document.pdf',
  Body: fileBuffer,
  ContentType: 'application/pdf',
}));

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Garage: Built for Geo-Distribution

Garage is a lightweight Rust-based object storage system designed specifically for scenarios that other S3 implementations handle poorly: multiple nodes across different geographic locations, unreliable network connections, and modest hardware.

Why Garage

• Designed for 3+ nodes across multiple sites — this is Garage's killer feature
• Extremely lightweight — runs on 1 GB RAM, 16 GB disk
• Built with partition tolerance — works across flaky inter-datacenter links
• No single point of failure — any node can be down and the cluster continues

Garage vs SeaweedFS

Garage is not a datacenter tool — it's a "real world" tool. If you want to run three nodes in three different cities (home lab + VPS + office), connected over regular internet, Garage handles this better than anything else.

SeaweedFS is better for single-datacenter or cloud deployments where network reliability is high. Garage is better for truly distributed setups.

Quick Start

# Three-node Garage cluster:
# Install on each node:
docker pull dxflrs/garage:v1.0.0

# Node 1 configuration:
cat > /etc/garage.toml << EOF
metadata_dir = "/var/lib/garage/meta"
data_dir = "/var/lib/garage/data"
db_engine = "lmdb"
replication_factor = 3

[rpc_secret]
secret = "$(openssl rand -hex 32)"

[rpc_bind_addr]
addr = "0.0.0.0:3901"

[s3_api]
s3_region = "garage"
api_bind_addr = "0.0.0.0:3900"
EOF

docker run -d --network host \
  -v /etc/garage.toml:/etc/garage/garage.toml \
  -v /var/lib/garage:/var/lib/garage \
  dxflrs/garage:v1.0.0

S3 API Compatibility

Garage supports core S3 operations: GET, PUT, DELETE, LIST, multipart upload, presigned URLs. It does not implement every S3 feature (lifecycle policies, object tagging, bucket notifications are partial). Check Garage's compatibility table before adopting.

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Ceph RGW: Enterprise-Scale

Ceph is the enterprise-grade distributed storage system used at petabyte scale in production by organizations including CERN. Ceph RGW (RADOS Gateway) is its S3-compatible interface.

Why Ceph

• Battle-tested at petabyte scale — the most proven distributed storage system in existence
• Excellent S3 compatibility — closest to full AWS S3 feature parity
• LGPL 2.1 license — permissive, widely used in commercial deployments
• CNCF project — no single-vendor license risk

Why Not Ceph

• Operationally complex — Ceph is not a weekend project. Plan for a week to set up properly and ongoing time to maintain
• Heavyweight — minimum 3 nodes, 4+ GB RAM per node, complex networking
• Learning curve — the documentation is extensive and the mental model is different from simpler tools

For small teams and self-hosters, SeaweedFS or Garage are better fits. Ceph is for teams with dedicated infrastructure engineers.

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RustFS: The Emerging MinIO Drop-In

RustFS is a new Rust-based S3-compatible object store with an explicit goal of being a drop-in MinIO replacement. As of 2026 it has ~4K stars and is gaining traction post-MinIO maintenance mode announcement.

Why Consider RustFS

• Apache 2.0 license — clean, commercial-friendly
• Written in Rust — excellent memory safety and performance characteristics
• Designed as MinIO drop-in — existing MinIO configurations should migrate easily
• Active development — community is growing post-MinIO announcement

Caveat

RustFS is newer and less battle-tested than SeaweedFS. For new production deployments today, SeaweedFS has more production validation. Watch RustFS over the next 12 months.

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Decision Guide

Choose SeaweedFS if:
  → Single datacenter or cloud VPS deployment
  → Apache 2.0 license required (no AGPL)
  → Need proven production track record
  → Mixed file sizes (small files + large objects)
  → Want Go-based tooling

Choose Garage if:
  → Multiple nodes across different geographic locations
  → Home lab / edge / low-resource nodes
  → Inter-node network is unreliable
  → Want minimal resource footprint

Choose Ceph RGW if:
  → Petabyte-scale storage requirements
  → Dedicated infrastructure team
  → Need maximum S3 feature parity
  → Enterprise environment with compliance requirements

Still use MinIO if:
  → Already deployed and working — no need to migrate immediately
  → Using enterprise license (supported going forward)
  → Limited operational capacity to migrate

Use AWS S3 / Cloudflare R2 if:
  → Don't want to manage storage infrastructure at all
  → R2 has zero egress fees and is very cost-competitive
  → Team prioritizes managed over self-hosted

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Migration from MinIO to SeaweedFS

If you're currently on MinIO and want to migrate:

# Use rclone to copy between S3-compatible stores:
# First, configure both remotes in ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf:

[minio-source]
type = s3
provider = Minio
endpoint = http://old-minio:9000
access_key_id = minioadmin
secret_access_key = minioadmin

[seaweedfs-dest]
type = s3
provider = Other
endpoint = http://new-seaweedfs:8333
access_key_id = your-key
secret_access_key = your-secret
force_path_style = true

# Copy all buckets:
rclone sync minio-source: seaweedfs-dest: --progress

Update your application's S3 endpoint environment variable and your existing code continues working without changes.

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Methodology

• MinIO maintenance mode: InfoQ report, community GitHub discussions (December 2025)
• SeaweedFS: github.com/seaweedfs/seaweedfs, Apache 2.0, ~23K stars
• Garage: garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr, active community, Rust
• Benchmark data: repoflow.io/blog

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Choosing Based on Your Storage Workload

The decision guide above covers the primary use case for each tool, but real-world storage workloads have nuances that affect the choice.

File size distribution matters. SeaweedFS was specifically designed to handle a mix of small and large files efficiently — this is a known weakness of traditional distributed storage systems that optimize for one or the other. If your application stores profile images (small), user documents (medium), and video files (large), SeaweedFS handles this mix without performance degradation. Garage's design is optimized for durability and correctness across network partitions rather than for mixed file sizes, so performance on many small objects may be a consideration.

Write vs read patterns. Applications that write many objects (log archives, event streams, data pipelines) have different requirements than applications that write few objects but read them frequently (CDN origin, media serving). SeaweedFS's architecture handles both patterns, but its read performance on cached objects is particularly strong. Ceph RGW's client library integrations and Rados connector make it attractive for data-intensive workloads with complex read patterns.

Metadata operations at scale. If your application needs to list large numbers of objects (a bucket with millions of files), list operations can be a performance bottleneck in any S3-compatible system. Both SeaweedFS and Garage support prefix-based listing, but the underlying performance characteristics differ. Test your specific access patterns with representative data volumes before committing to either for use cases that depend heavily on bucket listing operations.

Integration with Modern Application Stacks

The S3 compatibility of these alternatives means your existing application code works without modification. But there are specific integration patterns worth knowing.

For Next.js applications using the @aws-sdk/client-s3 package for file uploads, the only change when switching to a self-hosted S3-compatible store is the endpoint URL and credentials. The presigned URL generation workflow — where your backend generates a signed URL and the client uploads directly to the storage endpoint — works identically with SeaweedFS, Garage, or Ceph RGW.

Database backup workflows using pg_dump piped to aws s3 cp also work without modification against any S3-compatible endpoint. The --endpoint-url flag on the AWS CLI overrides the default AWS endpoint, and most backup scripts support this parameter.

For applications using Supabase's storage API, the underlying storage backend can be configured to use any S3-compatible endpoint — which means teams running self-hosted Supabase alongside their own SeaweedFS or Garage instance get the Supabase storage interface on top of their own infrastructure.

Teams building or migrating their object storage infrastructure should also review the AWS S3 to MinIO migration guide, which covers the rclone-based migration approach in detail. The same technique works for migrating to SeaweedFS or Garage — rclone treats all S3-compatible endpoints equivalently.

Lifecycle policies and storage tiering. S3 lifecycle policies automate moving objects between storage classes or deleting them after defined periods. MinIO supports S3-compatible lifecycle policy configuration. This is valuable for log archives (30 days hot, 90 days cold, delete at 180) and backup retention policies. Without lifecycle policies, storage accumulates until someone manually intervenes. Configuring policies at setup time prevents storage cost growth from becoming a long-term problem.

Encryption at rest and in transit. MinIO supports server-side encryption (SSE-S3 with MinIO-managed keys or SSE-KMS with an external key management service). All three alternatives support TLS for in-transit encryption. For applications handling regulated data, configure both: TLS between application and storage endpoint, plus SSE for objects at rest. MinIO's SSE implementation is compatible with the AWS S3 SSE API, so application code written for AWS encryption works against MinIO without modification.

For teams deploying these storage solutions as part of a broader self-hosted stack, the deployment and management patterns from the docker-compose templates guide apply directly — SeaweedFS and Garage both run as Docker containers with standard volume mounts.

Storage costs at the infrastructure level are predictable with self-hosted solutions in a way that cloud storage is not. A 10 TB NVMe disk on a dedicated server costs $20–40/month all-in. The same 10 TB stored on AWS S3 costs approximately $230/month in storage fees alone, plus bandwidth egress. For applications that need to store significant data volumes — media files, user uploads, database backups, log archives — the economics of self-hosted object storage become compelling quickly.

The operational maturity of SeaweedFS specifically deserves mention. It has been in production at companies handling petabyte-scale storage for over a decade. The GitHub issue tracker shows active maintenance and responsive developers. The documentation covers both basic single-server setups and complex multi-datacenter configurations. For teams with serious storage requirements who are evaluating whether open source alternatives are production-ready, SeaweedFS has the track record to support that confidence.

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See all open source cloud storage alternatives at OSSAlt.com/alternatives/aws-s3.