What is Arweave used for?

Arweave is a global, permissionless hard drive that stores data permanently and incentivizes nodes to keep it. It is a good fit for preservation of humanity's most important data, and hosting truly decentralized and provably neutral web apps.

Is Arweave open source?

Yes. Arweave is open source under the GPL-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at ArweaveTeam/arweave and is written mainly in Erlang.

Yes. Arweave is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Arweave?

Yes. Arweave can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Arweave an alternative to?

Arweave is an open-source alternative to Cloudflare R2, Amazon S3 and Bunny Storage. Other open-source alternatives to Cloudflare R2 include SeaweedFS, RustFS and Ceph.

Is Arweave actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Arweave was on 8 October 2026. The project has 1.1k stars on GitHub.

Arweave: open-source alternative to Cloudflare R2, Amazon S3

About Arweave

Arweave is a network that provides permanent information storage, functioning like Bitcoin but for data. It creates a permanent and decentralized web inside an open ledger.

The protocol is stable, mature, and widely adopted, with a fully decentralized ecosystem. It supports applications from preserving important data to hosting decentralized web apps.

Key features

Permanent data storage
Decentralized and permissionless network
Proof of access mechanism
Tokenomic endowment model for node incentives
Supports hosting of decentralized web apps

Good fit for

Preservation of humanity's most important data
Hosting truly decentralized and provably neutral web apps

Built with: Erlang tools
Tags: permanent storage; decentralized; blockchain; data storage; web3

Arweave: questions and answers

What is Arweave used for?: Arweave is a global, permissionless hard drive that stores data permanently and incentivizes nodes to keep it. It is a good fit for preservation of humanity's most important data, and hosting truly decentralized and provably neutral web apps.
Is Arweave open source?: Yes. Arweave is open source under the GPL-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at ArweaveTeam/arweave and is written mainly in Erlang.
Is Arweave free?: Yes. Arweave is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Arweave?: Yes. Arweave can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Arweave an alternative to?: Arweave is an open-source alternative to Cloudflare R2, Amazon S3 and Bunny Storage. Other open-source alternatives to Cloudflare R2 include SeaweedFS, RustFS and Ceph.
Is Arweave actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Arweave was on 8 October 2026. The project has 1.1k stars on GitHub.