SeaweedFS — Self-Hosted, Open-Source

SeaweedFS is an open source distributed file system supporting WebDAV, S3 API, FUSE mount, HDFS, etc, optimized for lots of small files, and easy to add capacity.

License: Apache-2.0. Built with: Go, Rust, templ, Java, Shell, Makefile, JavaScript, Python, HTML, Go Template, Lua, CSS, Dockerfile. Source: https://github.com/seaweedfs/seaweedfs.

Features

Support different replication levels, with rack and data center aware.
Automatic master servers failover - no single point of failure (SPOF).
Automatic compression depending on file MIME type.
Automatic compaction to reclaim disk space after deletion or update.
[Automatic entry TTL expiration][VolumeServerTTL].
Flexible Capacity Expansion: Any server with some disk space can add to the total storage space.
Adding/Removing servers does not cause any data re-balancing unless triggered by admin commands.
Optional picture resizing.
Support ETag, Accept-Range, Last-Modified, etc.
Support in-memory/leveldb/readonly mode tuning for memory/performance balance.

Installation

See official install docs: https://github.com/seaweedfs/seaweedfs/wiki

Why self-host SeaweedFS

Self-hosting gives you three things SaaS can’t: data ownership (the files live on disks you control), cost predictability (a one-time setup vs. recurring per-seat fees that grow with your household or team), and longevity (open-source means the app keeps working even if the maintainers move on, since you can pin a working version). The trade-off is that you take on the operational work of running a server, applying updates, and handling backups.

Hardware notes

My Own Unscientific Single Machine Results on Mac Book with Solid State Disk, CPU: 1 Intel Core i7 2.6GHz.

Where to go from here

Last verified: 2026-04-28