head to head · open source
seaweedfs vs cubefs
seaweedfs has 34,842 GitHub stars, 3,002 forks, 772 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cubefs has 5,660 stars, 714 forks, 265 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. seaweedfs leads on adoption by 516% (34,842 vs 5,660 stars). seaweedfs is written in Go under Apache-2.0; cubefs is written in Go under Apache-2.0. seaweedfs has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, cubefs 13%. seaweedfs was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 6 topic tags (distributed-file-system, distributed-storage, erasure-coding, fuse), 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
| seaweedfs | cubefs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 5.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 714 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick seaweedfs if
- You weight community size — 35K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cubefs if
- You want the cubefs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cubefs fits your workflow better
About seaweedfs
SeaweedFS is an Apache 2.0 distributed storage system written in Go that serves an S3 compatible object store, a POSIX file system, and Iceberg lakehouse tables from one weed binary, built for storing and serving billions of files with O(1) disk access.
read the full seaweedfs overview →
About cubefs
CubeFS is an Apache 2.0, CNCF graduated cloud native distributed file and object storage system written in Go, built for teams that need POSIX, HDFS, S3, and REST access to a single storage layer across datacenters, private and hybrid clouds, and Kubernetes.
read the full cubefs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is seaweedfs or cubefs more popular?
seaweedfs has 34,842 GitHub stars and cubefs has 5,660. seaweedfs has the larger community by that measure.
Are seaweedfs and cubefs free?
Both are open source. seaweedfs is licensed under Apache-2.0 and cubefs under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between seaweedfs and cubefs?
seaweedfs is written in Go and cubefs 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, seaweedfs or cubefs?
Choose seaweedfs if you want the larger community (34,842 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose cubefs if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.