head to head · open source

mountpoint-s3 vs ZeroFS

mountpoint-s3 has 5,794 GitHub stars, 255 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ZeroFS has 3,164 stars, 128 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. mountpoint-s3 leads on adoption by 83% (5,794 vs 3,164 stars). mountpoint-s3 is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; ZeroFS is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. mountpoint-s3 has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, ZeroFS 4%. mountpoint-s3 was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (filesystem, 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.

mountpoint-s3 ★ 5.8K ZeroFS ★ 3.2K category Data & Analytics

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Side by side

mountpoint-s3 ZeroFS
GitHub stars ★ 5.8K ★ 3.2K
License Apache-2.0 AGPL-3.0
Written in Rust Rust
Last push 2026-11-02 2026-10-28
Forks ⑂ 255 ⑂ 128
Self-hosting Yes Yes
Data ownership Your server Your server

pick mountpoint-s3 if

  • You weight community size — 5.8K stars and counting
  • You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
  • Your stack matches Rust
  • You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance

full mountpoint-s3 profile →

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

full ZeroFS profile →

About mountpoint-s3

Mountpoint for Amazon S3 Mountpoint for Amazon S3 is a simple, high throughput file client for mounting an Amazon S3 bucket as a local file system. With Mountpoint for Amazon S3, your applications can access objects stored in Amazon S3 through file operations like open and read . Mountpoint for Amazon S3 automatically translates these operations into S3 object API calls, giving your applications access to the elastic storage and throughput of Amazon S3 through a file interface. Mountpoint for Amazon S3 is optimized for applications that need high read throughput to large objects, potentially from many clients at…

read the full mountpoint-s3 overview →

About ZeroFS

Documentation Quickstart ZeroFS is a log structured filesystem for S3 ZeroFS serves S3 compatible buckets as POSIX filesystems over NFS and 9P, and as raw block devices over NBD. All three servers run in a single userspace process. Data is compressed and encrypted before upload. ZeroFS differentiates itself from other "filesystem on S3" projects by: Being POSIX conformant Reaching near raw S3 throughput on large files, and scaling to workloads of hundreds of millions of small files Handling tens of thousands of requests per second Requiring no external database service (everything is stored on S3) Being well…

read the full ZeroFS overview →

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Frequently asked questions

Is mountpoint-s3 or ZeroFS more popular?

mountpoint-s3 has 5,794 GitHub stars and ZeroFS has 3,164. mountpoint-s3 has the larger community by that measure.

Are mountpoint-s3 and ZeroFS free?

Both are open source. mountpoint-s3 is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ZeroFS under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.

What is the difference between mountpoint-s3 and ZeroFS?

mountpoint-s3 is written in Rust 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, mountpoint-s3 or ZeroFS?

Choose mountpoint-s3 if you want the larger community (5,794 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.