What is SeaweedFS used for?

SeaweedFS is a distributed storage system that serves an S3 object store, a file system and Iceberg tables from one scalable binary. It is a good fit for self-hosted S3 storage for applications, storing billions of small files efficiently and data lake storage on your own servers.

Is SeaweedFS open source?

Yes. SeaweedFS is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at seaweedfs/seaweedfs and is written mainly in Go.

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

Can I self-host SeaweedFS?

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

What is SeaweedFS an alternative to?

SeaweedFS is an open-source alternative to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage and Backblaze B2. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon S3 include Ceph and RustFS.

Is SeaweedFS actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to SeaweedFS was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 4.48, published on 28 September 2026. The project has 35k stars on GitHub.

SeaweedFS: open-source alternative to Amazon S3

About SeaweedFS

SeaweedFS is a distributed storage system built to store very large numbers of files and serve them quickly. A single weed binary can provide an S3-compatible object store, a POSIX file system and S3 Tables for lakehouse use, all over the same data. The project is written in Go and released under the Apache-2.0 license.

Its design aims for constant-time disk access per file, and capacity grows by starting another volume server. Cloud storage can be cached or tiered transparently, and replication and erasure coding are supported. The same process can also run the master, volume servers, a filer, WebDAV, an Iceberg REST catalog and an Admin UI. You can start with one command, Docker, Docker Compose or Helm on Kubernetes, or build from source. The README includes comparisons with HDFS, Ceph, GlusterFS, MooseFS and MinIO.

Key features

S3-compatible object storage
POSIX file system access via FUSE
Iceberg tables and S3 Tables support
Tiering and caching for cloud storage
Replication and erasure coding
Install with Docker, Helm or one binary

Good fit for

→Self-hosted S3 storage for applications
→Storing billions of small files efficiently
→Data lake storage on your own servers

Built with: Go; Kubernetes
Tags: object-storage; s3; distributed-storage; file-system; golang; kubernetes; erasure-coding; self-hosted

SeaweedFS: questions and answers

What is SeaweedFS used for?: SeaweedFS is a distributed storage system that serves an S3 object store, a file system and Iceberg tables from one scalable binary. It is a good fit for self-hosted S3 storage for applications, storing billions of small files efficiently and data lake storage on your own servers.
Is SeaweedFS open source?: Yes. SeaweedFS is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at seaweedfs/seaweedfs and is written mainly in Go.
Is SeaweedFS free?: Yes. SeaweedFS is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host SeaweedFS?: Yes. SeaweedFS can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is SeaweedFS an alternative to?: SeaweedFS is an open-source alternative to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage and Backblaze B2. Other open-source alternatives to Amazon S3 include Ceph and RustFS.
Is SeaweedFS actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to SeaweedFS was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is 4.48, published on 28 September 2026. The project has 35k stars on GitHub.