# Seafile 18 Hacker News commenters recommended Seafile and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Recommended as a fast, reliable, open source alternative to Dropbox and Google Drive with versioning and sharing; the iOS app draws complaints. ## Why people recommend it - Fast, reliable sync performance (6 comments): "Nextcloud was order of magnitude slower than Seafile even for basic file sync" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48589983)) "about 10x slower for LAN sync than Seafile on a same machine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47718845)) "everything worked reliably for me, it was much faster" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45799987)) - Open source Google Drive alternative (2 comments): "Things work just fine elsewhere (Dropbox, Google Drive, Nextcloud, and Seafile are all solutions I've had good experiences with)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47773536)) "It's by far the best open source alternative to Google Drive and Google Docs!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49079734)) - No bloat, versioning, sharing (2 comments): "Works, no bloat, versioning and some file sharing." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45799262)) "I only share with one person so we use Seafile" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48069787)) ## What people warn about - Feels large for light use (1 comments): "it too seemed quite large and I worried it wouldn't be the lightweight solution I'm looking for" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45799104)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Syncthing](https://hackerapproved.com/p/syncthing.md): 212 recommend - [Nextcloud](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nextcloud.md): 154 recommend - [OpenCloud](https://hackerapproved.com/p/opencloud.md): 18 recommend - [ownCloud](https://hackerapproved.com/p/owncloud.md): 9 recommend - [Maestral](https://hackerapproved.com/p/maestral.md): 6 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Seafile", https://hackerapproved.com/p/seafile/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).