Garage S3 object store
Hacker ApprovedThe most recommended of 8 object storage servers
Simple, free S3-compatible storage that runs on one node or many. Caveat: not fully feature-complete, and critics report data loss after unclean power failures.
Simple, free S3-compatible storage that runs on one node or many. Caveat: not fully feature-complete, and critics report data loss after unclean power failures.
101 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 83
- criticize it
- 18
- approval share
- 82%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 83 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.6 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Easier to deploy than MinIO
“found that Garage is somewhat easier to deploy in comparison to our existing use of MinIO, but is not as performant at high speeds”
Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters” “Garage is somewhat easier to deploy in comparison to our existing use of MinIO, but is not as performant at high speeds”
Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters” “somewhat easier to deploy in comparison to our existing use of MinIO, but is not as performant at high speeds”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters” - Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Alternatives to MinIO for single-node local S3”
- Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “MinIO is now in maintenance-mode”
- Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “MinIO repository is no longer maintained”
Simple, lightweight, clean design
“It was a lot simpler imo than minio and works great over a handful of servers in different DCs.”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Alternatives to MinIO for single-node local S3” “Garage is actually really simple for something that runs on multiple servers”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “Healthchecks.io Now Uses Self-Hosted Object Storage” “it's much simpler - no web ui, no fancy RS coding, no VC-backed AI company”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “MinIO is now in maintenance-mode” - Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: Lightweight, S3-compatible object storage server”
Strong durability and correctness testing
“Garage and Ceph (well, radosgw) are the only open source S3-compatible object storage which have undergone serious durability/correctness testing”
Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters” “Building a production-ready S3 replacement requires careful, deliberate and rigorous engineering work (which is what Garage is doing[1]).”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “MinIO is now in maintenance-mode” “If you're looking for something that won't eat your data in edge cases, Ceph (and perhaps Garage) are your only options.”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “MinIO is now in maintenance-mode” - Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters”
Solid replacement for MinIO
“From what I have seen in the previous discussions here (since and before Minio debacle) and at work, Garage is a solid replacement.”
Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters” “could swap it out for Garage in a day, caught by a monitoring tool I slopped together”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Amodei Re. Regulation” “the smart money and talent have already moved on to systems like Garage”
Comment from 14 Feb 2026 in “MinIO repository is no longer maintained”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Weak performance under load
“garage was working fine in other scenarios but it really had pathological behavior with the small read/write with torrenting benchmarks”
Comment from 12 Jul 2026 in “ZeroFS vs. Amazon S3 Files” “found that Garage is somewhat easier to deploy in comparison to our existing use of MinIO, but is not as performant at high speeds”
Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters” “single node parallel write performance was pretty unimpressive and started throwing strange errors”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters” - Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “MinIO is now in maintenance-mode”
- Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters”
- Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters”
Data loss after unclean shutdowns
“One site losing power, corrupting the local state, then propagating that corruption to the rest of the cluster would not be fine.”
Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters” “The very first thing Garage did after I installed it on a test three-node cluster is get corrupted and lose files.”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Alternatives to MinIO for single-node local S3” “It's downright stupid if you build a system that loses all existing data when all nodes go down uncleanly”
Comment from 21 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters” - Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters”
- Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Garage – An S3 object store so reliable you can run it outside datacenters”
Config and CLI friction
“I use garage but the main issue i have is the mandatory random keys which means i cannot hardcode them in my compose file.”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “I Just Want Simple S3” “The CLI part was a bit in the way last time, this could have been automated but it wasn't straightforward.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “MinIO is now in maintenance-mode” “the garage.toml configuration file could be a bit more user friendly”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “I Just Want Simple S3” Missing some S3 features
“looks pretty great and I wished I could have used this, but it is not yet feature-complete with S3 protocol”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “I Just Want Simple S3” “Garage is really good for core S3, the only thing I ran into was it didn't support object tagging.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “MinIO is now in maintenance-mode”
Other object storage servers people recommend
The four most recommended other object storage servers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 8 object storage servers, rankedWhat people said
40 of the 134 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It was a lot simpler imo than minio and works great over a handful of servers in different DCs.”
“The very first thing Garage did after I installed it on a test three-node cluster is get corrupted and lose files.”
“I don't recall it being onerous , but I was looking for some basic S3-alike capabilities, not just minio-alike.”
“could swap it out for Garage in a day, caught by a monitoring tool I slopped together”
“Being lightweight and distributed as a single binary is really cool!”
“garage was working fine in other scenarios but it really had pathological behavior with the small read/write with torrenting benchmarks”
“Garage is actually really simple for something that runs on multiple servers”
“I use garage but the main issue i have is the mandatory random keys which means i cannot hardcode them in my compose file.”
“looks pretty great and I wished I could have used this, but it is not yet feature-complete with S3 protocol”
“the garage.toml configuration file could be a bit more user friendly”
“only "complex" thing in garage is the layout which only matters if you're doing distributed mode.”
“With built-in instant replication between nodes in garage I should have instant backup of my files.”
“Now that I know about PutBucketCORS it's perfectly clear but perhaps it's not easily discoverable.”
“the smart money and talent have already moved on to systems like Garage”
“Garage is indeed an excellent project, but I think it has a few drawbacks compared to the alternatives”
“Had great experience with garage for an easy to setup distributed s3 cluster for home lab use”
“It provides a pretty good CLI that makes automatic setup easier than MinIO.”
“All nodes going down doesn't have to be common to make that much data loss a terrible design.”
“It's downright stupid if you build a system that loses all existing data when all nodes go down uncleanly”
“Overall I like the software a lot but if you have setup that uses those features, beware.”
“single node parallel write performance was pretty unimpressive and started throwing strange errors”
“somewhat easier to deploy in comparison to our existing use of MinIO, but is not as performant at high speeds”
“If you can't guarantee anything for all the nodes losing power at the same time, that's really bad.”
“found that Garage is somewhat easier to deploy in comparison to our existing use of MinIO, but is not as performant at high speeds”
“Garage accommodates running as a single node without work-arounds and special configuration”
“One site losing power, corrupting the local state, then propagating that corruption to the rest of the cluster would not be fine.”
“Garage is somewhat easier to deploy in comparison to our existing use of MinIO, but is not as performant at high speeds”
“Garage looks really nice: I've evaluated it with test code and benchmarks and it looks like a winner.”
“Garage makes a very precise promise to its users, which is fully respected.”
“From what I have seen in the previous discussions here (since and before Minio debacle) and at work, Garage is a solid replacement.”
“Garage and Ceph (well, radosgw) are the only open source S3-compatible object storage which have undergone serious durability/correctness testing”
“It's a really cool system for hyper converged architecture where storage requests can pull data from the local machine”
“If you're looking for something that won't eat your data in edge cases, Ceph (and perhaps Garage) are your only options.”
“Garage (global replication based on last-writer-wins CRDS conflict resolution)”
“Building a production-ready S3 replacement requires careful, deliberate and rigorous engineering work (which is what Garage is doing[1]).”
“found that Garage is somewhat easier to deploy, but is not as performant at high speeds”
“The CLI part was a bit in the way last time, this could have been automated but it wasn't straightforward.”
“it's fairly simple, and if your usecase is similar... then it's probably a good fit”
“Garage is really good for core S3, the only thing I ran into was it didn't support object tagging.”
“it's much simpler - no web ui, no fancy RS coding, no VC-backed AI company”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.