Seafile
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 6 of 14 file sync apps by recommenders
Recommended as a fast, reliable, open source alternative to Dropbox and Google Drive with versioning and sharing; the iOS app draws complaints.
Recommended as a fast, reliable, open source alternative to Dropbox and Google Drive with versioning and sharing; the iOS app draws complaints.
19 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 18
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 95%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 18 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 18 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 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
Fast, reliable sync performance
“Nextcloud was order of magnitude slower than Seafile even for basic file sync”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “Nextcloud Hub 26 Spring: Built together, designed for the future” “about 10x slower for LAN sync than Seafile on a same machine”
Comment from 10 Apr 2026 in “Mysteries of Dropbox: Property-Based Testing of a Distributed Sync Service [pdf]” “everything worked reliably for me, it was much faster”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Why Nextcloud feels slow to use” - Comment from 2 Feb 2026 in “Termux”
- Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Why Nextcloud feels slow to use”
- Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Why Nextcloud feels slow to use”
Open source Google Drive alternative
“Things work just fine elsewhere (Dropbox, Google Drive, Nextcloud, and Seafile are all solutions I've had good experiences with).”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Backblaze has stopped backing up your data” “It's by far the best open source alternative to Google Drive and Google Docs!”
Comment from 28 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: SeaTicket – AI agent that resolve GitHub and Discord issues” No bloat, versioning, sharing
“Works, no bloat, versioning and some file sharing.”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Why Nextcloud feels slow to use” “I only share with one person so we use Seafile”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “Google Broke reCAPTCHA for De-Googled Android Users”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Feels large for light use
“it too seemed quite large and I worried it wouldn't be the lightweight solution I'm looking for”
Comment from 3 Nov 2025 in “Why Nextcloud feels slow to use”
Other file sync apps people recommend
The four most recommended other file sync apps, 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 14 file sync apps, rankedWhat people said
19 of the 21 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Self-hosted Seafile + Tailscale works great for me.”
“I literally use all of these now daily.”
“It's by far the best open source alternative to Google Drive and Google Docs!”
“Nextcloud was order of magnitude slower than Seafile even for basic file sync”
“I only share with one person so we use Seafile”
“Things work just fine elsewhere (Dropbox, Google Drive, Nextcloud, and Seafile are all solutions I've had good experiences with).”
“about 10x slower for LAN sync than Seafile on a same machine”
“seems to have that feature, but upload only”
“It's pretty magical. It nails the "online" vs "cloud only" paradigm via the SeaDrive client.”
“you can backup from a fuse mount”
“2gb free plan to now unlimited =)”
“Super fast and dependable, highly recommend.”
“No data loss so far. Performance is great.”
“It’s blazingly fast compared to NC.”
“everything worked reliably for me, it was much faster”
“I had issues getting it working via a reverse proxy”
“Works, no bloat, versioning and some file sharing.”
“it too seemed quite large and I worried it wouldn't be the lightweight solution I'm looking for”
“The iOS app is ass though.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.