head to head · open source
Ceph vs Alarik
Ceph has 17,193 GitHub stars, 6,555 forks, 1,353 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Alarik has 578 stars, 8 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Ceph leads on adoption by 2,875% (17,193 vs 578 stars). Ceph is written in C++ under a custom or non-standard licence; Alarik is written in Swift under Apache-2.0. Ceph has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, Alarik 1%. Ceph was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Ceph | Alarik | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 578 |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 8 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Ceph if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Alarik if
- You want the Alarik feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and Alarik fits your workflow better
About Ceph
Ceph a scalable distributed storage system See for current information about Ceph. Status Contributing Code Most of Ceph is dual licensed under the LGPL version 2.1 or 3.0. Some miscellaneous code is either public domain or licensed under a BSD style license. The Ceph documentation is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 (CC BY SA 3.0). Some headers included in the ceph/ceph repository are licensed under the GPL. See the file COPYING for a full inventory of licenses by file. All code contributions must include a valid "Signed off by" line. See the file SubmittingPatches.rst for details on…
About Alarik
Alarik a High Performance S3 Compatible Object Storage Alarik is a high performance, S3 compatible object storage system written in Swift , licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. It aims to deliver exceptional speed, developer friendly ergonomics, and a modern cloud native core. See Documentation Why Alarik? Recent shifts in the ecosystem especially surrounding MinIO have revealed how fragile it is to depend on a single “reference” implementation for S3 compatible storage. These changes highlighted structural, licensing, and philosophical issues that many teams had long overlooked. Alarik exists to provide a…
read the full Alarik overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ceph or Alarik more popular?
Ceph has 17,193 GitHub stars and Alarik has 578. Ceph has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ceph and Alarik free?
Both are open source. Ceph has no licence declared in this registry, and Alarik is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Ceph and Alarik?
Ceph is written in C++ and Alarik in Swift. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Ceph or Alarik?
Choose Ceph if you want the larger community (17,193 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Alarik if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.