head to head · open source
Garage vs Alarik
Garage has 4,812 GitHub stars, 185 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. Alarik has 578 stars, 8 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Garage leads on adoption by 733% (4,812 vs 578 stars). Garage is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0; Alarik is written in Swift under Apache-2.0. Garage has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, Alarik 1%. Garage was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (object-storage), 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
| Garage | Alarik | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 4.8K | ★ 578 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-10-24 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 185 | ⑂ 8 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Garage if
- You weight community size — 4.8K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- 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 Garage
Garage === [ Website and documentation Binary releases Git repository Matrix channel ] Garage is an S3 compatible distributed object storage service designed for self hosting at a small to medium scale. Garage is designed for storage clusters composed of nodes running at different physical locations, in order to easily provide a storage service that replicates data at these different locations and stays available even when some servers are unreachable. Garage also focuses on being lightweight, easy to operate, and highly resilient to machine failures. Garage is built by Deuxfleurs, an experimental small scale…
read the full Garage overview →
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 Garage or Alarik more popular?
Garage has 4,812 GitHub stars and Alarik has 578. Garage has the larger community by that measure.
Are Garage and Alarik free?
Both are open source. Garage is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Alarik under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Garage and Alarik?
Garage is written in Rust 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, Garage or Alarik?
Choose Garage if you want the larger community (4,812 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Alarik if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.