# RustFS

48 Hacker News commenters recommended RustFS and 26 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 9 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Free S3-compatible object storage that people use as a drop-in MinIO replacement, praised for speed and small footprint. Critics call it young and cite CLA and licensing concerns.

## Why people recommend it

- Drop-in replacement for MinIO (6 comments): "since then rustfs fixed the issue I found. Rustfs really is close to a minio rewrite." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47000716)) "Because RustFS is fully S3-compatible, we decided to tackle the on-disk format." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47425907)) "RustFS was just plug and play albeit a few minor API differences." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48785540))
- Fast with a small footprint (3 comments): "it's those small writes that was making garagefs perform so badly and rustfs perform a lot better" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48881546)) "Very slim footprint and very fast." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47000892)) "It's very compact and fast to run" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47494287))
- Easy setup and console (3 comments): "The RustFS console is the most convenient and user-friendly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47004266)) "It was easier that garagehq and it even comes with UI." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47733354)) "the rustfs setup has been pretty painless sofar" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47001071))
- Used in production without issues (3 comments): "This specific architectural strategy has been proven reliable in production environments at the EiB scale." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46372165)) "I ended up moving to rustfs for my plakar and restic backup station" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48880610)) "We use RustFS in a production system with no issues." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49711390))

## What people warn about

- Young and not production-ready (4 comments): "still very fresh project, to the point running out of date minio version will most likely be less problematic than latest rustfs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46137695)) "RustFS is very new, very much a work in progress[1], and will probably eat your data." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46159339)) "RustFS appears to be very early-stage with no real distributed systems architecture" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46328299))
- Marketing-heavy website (4 comments): "I really like RustFS as a product, but the marketing fluff and documentation put me off too." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005377)) "nearly clicked away based on the sheer volume of marketing wank on their main page" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46137384)) "there's so much marketing attached to the software it turns me off a little" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47005042))
- CLA and licensing concerns (2 comments): "The _only_ reason to require a CLA is because you expect to change the license in the future." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46140351)) "There's also a CLA with full copyright assignment, so yeah, I'd steer clear of that one" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47002320))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Garage S3 object store](https://hackerapproved.com/p/garage.md): 83 recommend
- [MinIO](https://hackerapproved.com/p/minio.md): 54 recommend
- [SeaweedFS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/seaweedfs.md): 46 recommend
- [VersityGW](https://hackerapproved.com/p/versitygw.md): 16 recommend
- [Versity S3 Gateway](https://hackerapproved.com/p/versity-s3-gateway.md): 7 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "RustFS", https://hackerapproved.com/p/rustfs/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).