SeaweedFS vs Tahoe-LAFS
SeaweedFS
seaweedfs.comTahoe-LAFS
tahoe-lafs.orgSide by side
| Figure | SeaweedFS | Tahoe-LAFS |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $1.67/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 10 | 1 |
| Spec score · Distributed File System Software | 7.9 (#12) | 8.3 (#6) |
| Integrations | The built-in Iceberg catalog supports querying with Spark, Trino, Dremio, and DuckDB. | A Tahoe-LAFS client node can provide an SFTP server for use with regular SFTP clients. |
| Protocols | The cluster supports S3, POSIX mounts, HDFS-compatible access, an Iceberg REST catalog, and WebDAV. | The documentation describes HTTP(S) and SFTP access through a gateway, and storage-server communication over HTTPS or Foolscap. |
| Support | Enterprise support is optional and purchased separately from the capacity license; published support channels and response targets vary by plan. | The installation guide directs users who need help with deployment to the tahoe-dev mailing list or Libera.Chat IRC. |
Plans
SeaweedFS
- Community supportFree
- Development & testingFree
- Capacity license — Monthly$2 a month
- Capacity license — Yearly$20 a year
- Essential support$2,000 a year
- Small Production support$5,000 a year
- Growth support$15,000 a year
- Standard support$40,000 a year
- Critical support$85,000 a year
- Enterprise 5 PB+Priced on request
In their own words
SeaweedFS
SeaweedFS is a distributed storage system that serves S3 objects, Iceberg tables, and POSIX files from one cluster. It supports S3, POSIX mounts, HDFS-compatible access, an Iceberg REST catalog, and WebDAV. Its built-in Iceberg catalog supports queries with Spark, Trino, Dremio, and DuckDB. The product describes scaling from gigabytes to petabytes and supporting billions of files. Development and testing under 25 TB are free, but production deployments require a paid license regardless of size. Monthly capacity licensing is $2 a month, based on used storage including replication or erasure-coding overhead; yearly licensing is $20 a year. Enterprise features include deleted-file recovery within a configurable retention window, point-in-time restoration, repair of missing or corrupted erasure-coding shards, and OIDC sign-in with role mapping. The free 25 TB trial limits deleted-file recovery retention to one hour. Enterprise support is optional and priced separately from capacity licensing. Community support is free and has no guaranteed response time. SeaweedFS is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows, with API access and self-hosted deployment.
Tahoe-LAFS
Tahoe-LAFS is free, open-source software for storing files across multiple servers. Before upload, a client encrypts each file with a unique key. Erasure coding distributes each file as shares, allowing recovery when some storage servers fail; the documented default uses 10 shares across at least 7 servers and can recover from any 3. A gateway checks integrity and ignores corrupted shares. Files can be immutable or mutable, with read-only or read-write access for mutable files and directories. The gateway gives access through HTTP(S) and SFTP, and a REST-style Web API supports programmatic operations. Users can run a gateway or operate a full grid of storage nodes and an introducer. Installation is documented for Windows, macOS, Linux, and BSD. The software is available under GNU GPL version 2 or later, or the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence version 1.0 or later. It is free at free. The public test grid is for experimentation, not reliable or large-scale storage.