head to head · open source
cubefs vs ZeroFS
cubefs has 5,660 GitHub stars, 714 forks, 265 open issues and last shipped today. ZeroFS has 3,078 stars, 119 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped today. cubefs leads on adoption by 84% (5,660 vs 3,078 stars). cubefs is written in Go under Apache-2.0; ZeroFS is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. cubefs has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, ZeroFS 4%. ZeroFS was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (cloud-storage, distributed-file-system, fuse, kubernetes), 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
| cubefs | ZeroFS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.7K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-22 | 2026-09-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 714 | ⑂ 119 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cubefs if
- You weight community size — 5.7K 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 ZeroFS if
- You want the ZeroFS 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 ZeroFS fits your workflow better
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 →
About ZeroFS
ZeroFS is a log structured filesystem written in Rust that presents S3 compatible buckets as POSIX filesystems over NFS and 9P, and as raw block devices over NBD, for teams that want object storage to behave like ordinary local storage.
read the full ZeroFS overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cubefs or ZeroFS more popular?
cubefs has 5,660 GitHub stars and ZeroFS has 3,078. cubefs has the larger community by that measure.
Are cubefs and ZeroFS free?
Both are open source. cubefs is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ZeroFS under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cubefs and ZeroFS?
cubefs is written in Go and ZeroFS 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, cubefs or ZeroFS?
Choose cubefs if you want the larger community (5,660 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ZeroFS if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.