head to head · open source
Ceph vs Filestash
Ceph has 17,050 GitHub stars, 6,504 forks, 1,353 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Filestash has 14,690 stars, 1,004 forks, 126 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ceph leads on adoption by 16% (17,050 vs 14,690 stars). Ceph is written in C++ under a custom or non-standard licence; Filestash is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Ceph has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, Filestash 7%. Ceph was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (nfs), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | Filestash | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 15K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.5K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| 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 Filestash if
- You want the Filestash feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Filestash fits your workflow better
About Ceph
Ceph is a scalable open source distributed storage system written in C++ and described as a platform for object, block, and file storage. It lives in infrastructure and operations storage solutions, where it provides a shared storage layer across distributed nodes rather than a single local disk.
About Filestash
Filestash is a Go, AGPL 3.0 licensed universal file storage client for enterprise storage. It lives in Infrastructure & Operations / Storage Solutions. It began as a storage agnostic Dropbox like file manager that speaks FTP, SFTP, S3, SMB, WebDAV, IPFS, and about 20 more protocols. It has three products: a browser based web client, native clients for macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, and iPhone, and gateways for exposing storage over protocols.
read the full Filestash overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ceph or Filestash more popular?
Ceph has 17,050 GitHub stars and Filestash has 14,690. Ceph has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ceph and Filestash free?
Both are open source. Ceph has no licence declared in this registry, and Filestash is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Ceph and Filestash?
Ceph is written in C++ and Filestash in Go. 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 Filestash?
Choose Ceph if you want the larger community (17,050 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Filestash if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.