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MinIO Alternatives — Silo vs RustFS vs SeaweedFS vs Garage vs Ceph RGW

Summary

The AGPLv3 MinIO community edition is archived: no community releases since RELEASE.2025-10-15T17-29-55Z, no official images (Docker Hub repositories deleted on 2026-09-11), and no fixes for advisories published after the archive, such as CVE-2026-39414. MinIO, Inc. develops only the commercial AIStor. This page compares the open-source S3-compatible stores that teams are moving to: the PGSTY Silo fork, RustFS, SeaweedFS, Garage, and Ceph RGW (see Ceph). Facts come from the MinIO alternatives table and the Ceph topic as of 2026-09-25. Cells marked "not covered" are gaps in this vault, not missing features.

Scope and depth

Only Ceph and MinIO have full topic pages in this vault. Silo, RustFS, SeaweedFS and Garage are described from the MinIO topic's alternatives research only. S3 API coverage and performance have not been compared under controlled conditions (see Open Questions). Test your own workload before committing.

Which One Should I Pick?

The flowchart starts from a team that runs, or planned to run, the MinIO community edition.

flowchart TD
    A["Replacing the MinIO<br/>community edition"] --> B{"Keep existing MinIO data<br/>and IAM in place, no copy?"}
    B -->|"Yes"| C{"Budget for a<br/>vendor subscription?"}
    C -->|"Yes"| AIS["MinIO AIStor<br/>(Enterprise Lite or Enterprise)"]
    C -->|"No"| SILO["PGSTY Silo fork<br/>(AGPLv3, same on-disk format)"]
    B -->|"No, will copy data<br/>with mc mirror or rclone"| D{"Also need block or file,<br/>or already run Ceph?"}
    D -->|"Yes"| RGW["Ceph RGW<br/>(LGPL, RADOS-backed)"]
    D -->|"No"| E{"AGPLv3 acceptable?"}
    E -->|"No, need Apache-2.0"| F{"Prefer a MinIO-like design<br/>with a web console?"}
    F -->|"Yes"| RUST["RustFS<br/>(1.0.0, 2026-09)"]
    F -->|"No"| SW["SeaweedFS<br/>(volume + filer, S3 gateway)"]
    E -->|"Yes"| G{"Small geo-distributed nodes,<br/>replication instead of EC is fine?"}
    G -->|"Yes"| GAR["Garage"]
    G -->|"No"| SILO

Single node only?

AIStor Free is a no-cost, proprietary license for single-node deployments with the full feature set. It suits labs and CI where an open-source license is not required. See MinIO: Licensing and Pricing.

At a Glance

Dimension PGSTY Silo RustFS SeaweedFS Garage Ceph RGW
Relationship to MinIO Fork of the MinIO server (formerly pgsty/minio, renamed 2026-08-06) Independent Rust rewrite with a MinIO-like design Independent Independent Independent (RADOS-backed S3/Swift gateway)
License AGPLv3 Apache-2.0 Apache-2.0 AGPLv3 LGPL-2.1 or LGPL-3.0
Status (2026-09) Active. Latest server RELEASE.2026-09-03T13-18-01Z 1.0.0 image published 2026-09-16 Active Active (v2.4.x images) Active. Tentacle 20.2.4 (2026-08-19)
Architecture MinIO server pools and erasure sets MinIO-like design Volume servers plus filer; S3 gateway on top of the filer Geo-distributed, small footprint radosgw (Beast frontend) on a RADOS cluster
Data protection Erasure coding and HighwayHash bitrot checks, as in MinIO Bitrot protection; other details not covered Not covered Replication, not erasure coding Replicated or erasure-coded RADOS pools
Console Full admin console restored Web console Not covered Not covered Ceph Dashboard (hosted by ceph-mgr)
Identity Inherits MinIO IAM and STS (OIDC, LDAP) OIDC Not covered Not covered Own S3 users (SigV4), account IAM (since Squid), STS/OIDC, bucket policies, Block Public Access
Also provides block or file No Not covered Not covered Not covered Yes, from the same cluster: RBD and CephFS
Packages Binaries, RPM/DEB, multi-arch images pgsty/silo, mcli client Container image Not covered Container images cephadm, or Rook (CephObjectStore CRD) on Kubernetes

Migration From MinIO

Target Data Users, groups, policies Effort
AIStor In place (same on-disk format) In place Lowest; needs a license key or subscription
PGSTY Silo In place: keeps the xl.meta format and the MINIO_* variables In place, or mc admin cluster iam export / import Low; swap binaries or images
RustFS, SeaweedFS, Garage, Ceph RGW Copy with mc mirror --watch --preserve or rclone, then compare with mc diff Recreate: MinIO IAM export only imports into MinIO-compatible servers Medium to high; plan a cutover window

The copy commands are in MinIO How-to: Migrate Data Off MinIO. Images that must keep working in the meantime are covered in Replace Docker Hub Images.

When to Choose

PGSTY Silo

  • You run MinIO today and want to stay open source with no data migration.
  • You miss the admin console that community builds lost in RELEASE.2025-05-24T17-08-30Z.
  • Risk: long-term funding and maintainer depth are unknown, although releases have shipped regularly since 2026-02.

RustFS

  • You want an Apache-2.0 store with a MinIO-like design, a web console and OIDC.
  • Risk: 1.0.0 is very recent (2026-09-16), so production track record is short.

SeaweedFS

  • You want Apache-2.0 and are comfortable with a volume-plus-filer design where S3 is one gateway on top of the filer.

Garage

  • You run small, geo-distributed nodes and accept replication rather than erasure coding, under AGPLv3.

Ceph RGW

  • You also need block (RBD) or file (CephFS), or already operate a Ceph cluster, so object storage comes from the same system.
  • Risk: heavier to operate than a single-purpose object store. The August 2026 security release fixed two high-severity RGW CVEs (CVE-2026-39944 STS token forgery, CVE-2026-54330 SigV4 header injection), so run 20.2.4 or 19.2.6 or later.

Staying on MinIO (AIStor)

  • You want vendor support and features such as AIStor Tables (Iceberg V3 REST catalog, GA 2026-02-03). Multi-node use needs Enterprise Lite (below 400 TiB) or Enterprise; prices are quote-only.

Open Questions

  • How do the five compare on S3 API coverage (versioning, object lock, SSE, lifecycle, notifications)? No structured test is recorded in this vault.
  • What are their throughput and small-object performance on the same hardware? No controlled benchmark was found.
  • Will Silo keep pace with security fixes long term, and will RustFS 1.x stabilise quickly?
  • Should SeaweedFS, Garage or RustFS get their own topic pages? That would let this comparison fill the "not covered" cells with sourced facts.

Sources