head to head · open source
seaweedfs vs lakeFS
seaweedfs has 35,871 GitHub stars, 3,099 forks, 772 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lakeFS has 5,575 stars, 490 forks, 443 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. seaweedfs leads on adoption by 543% (35,871 vs 5,575 stars). seaweedfs is written in Go under Apache-2.0; lakeFS is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. seaweedfs has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, lakeFS 9%. seaweedfs 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.
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Side by side
| seaweedfs | lakeFS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 490 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick seaweedfs if
- You weight community size — 36K 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 lakeFS if
- You want the lakeFS feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and lakeFS fits your workflow better
About seaweedfs
SeaweedFS SeaweedFS is a simple and highly scalable distributed file system. There are two objectives: 1. to store billions of files! 2. to serve the files fast! One weed binary serves an S3 object store, a POSIX file system, and a lakehouse with S3 Tables, all over the same data. Each blob is one disk read away, capacity grows by starting another volume server, and cloud storage can be cached or tiered transparently. Both read and write operations have O(1) complexity and can run at the full speed supported by the underlying hardware. Download Binaries for different platforms Wiki Documentation Community…
read the full seaweedfs overview →
About lakeFS
lakeFS is Data Version Control (Git for Data) lakeFS is an open source tool that transforms your object storage into a Git like repository. It enables you to manage your data lake the way you manage your code. With lakeFS you can build repeatable, atomic, and versioned data lake operations from complex ETL jobs to data science and analytics. lakeFS supports AWS S3, Azure Blob Storage, and Google Cloud Storage as its underlying storage service. It is API compatible with S3 and works seamlessly with all modern data frameworks such as Spark, Hive, AWS Athena, DuckDB, and Presto. For more information, see the…
read the full lakeFS overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is seaweedfs or lakeFS more popular?
seaweedfs has 35,871 GitHub stars and lakeFS has 5,575. seaweedfs has the larger community by that measure.
Are seaweedfs and lakeFS free?
Both are open source. seaweedfs is licensed under Apache-2.0, and lakeFS has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between seaweedfs and lakeFS?
seaweedfs is written in Go and lakeFS 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 lakeFS?
Choose seaweedfs if you want the larger community (35,871 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose lakeFS if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.