head to head · open source
rustfs vs ZeroFS
rustfs has 35,662 GitHub stars, 1,641 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ZeroFS has 3,164 stars, 128 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. rustfs leads on adoption by 1,027% (35,662 vs 3,164 stars). rustfs is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; ZeroFS is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. rustfs has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, ZeroFS 4%. rustfs was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (filesystem), 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
| rustfs | ZeroFS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 3.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 128 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rustfs if
- You weight community size — 36K 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
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 rustfs
RustFS is a high performance, distributed object storage system built in Rust. Getting Started · Docs · Bug reports · Discussions English 简体中文 Deutsch Español français 日本語 한국어 Portuguese Русский RustFS is a high performance, distributed object storage system built in Rust—one of the most loved programming languages worldwide. RustFS combines the simplicity of MinIO with the memory safety and raw performance of Rust. It offers broad S3 API compatibility for supported features, is completely open source, and is optimized for data lakes, AI, and big data workloads. Unlike other storage systems, RustFS is released…
read the full rustfs 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 rustfs or ZeroFS more popular?
rustfs has 35,662 GitHub stars and ZeroFS has 3,164. rustfs has the larger community by that measure.
Are rustfs and ZeroFS free?
Both are open source. rustfs is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ZeroFS under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rustfs and ZeroFS?
rustfs 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, rustfs or ZeroFS?
Choose rustfs if you want the larger community (35,662 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.