head to head · open source
Ceph vs Garage
Ceph has 17,050 GitHub stars, 6,504 forks, 1,353 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Garage has 4,541 stars, 176 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Ceph leads on adoption by 275% (17,050 vs 4,541 stars). Ceph is written in C++ under a custom or non-standard licence; Garage is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. Ceph has attracted 38% as many forks as stars, Garage 4%. 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Ceph | Garage | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 4.5K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.5K | ⑂ 176 |
| 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 Garage if
- You want the Garage feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Garage 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 Garage
Garage is an S3 compatible distributed object storage service written in Rust and released under the AGPL 3.0, built for self hosting at small to medium scale where the cluster spans nodes in different physical locations.
read the full Garage overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Storage Solutions projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Storage Solutions field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Ceph or Garage more popular?
Ceph has 17,050 GitHub stars and Garage has 4,541. Ceph has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ceph and Garage free?
Both are open source. Ceph has no licence declared in this registry, and Garage is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Ceph and Garage?
Ceph is written in C++ and Garage in Rust. 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 Garage?
Choose Ceph if you want the larger community (17,050 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Garage if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.