ZeroFS
The most recommended of 3 object storage filesystems
Recommended as a POSIX filesystem on S3 alone, with no separate database; critics question its latency claims and call it risky for important data.
Recommended as a POSIX filesystem on S3 alone, with no separate database; critics question its latency claims and call it risky for important data.
28 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 14
- approval share
- 50%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1 recommender for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not 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
Needs only an S3 bucket
“outperforms JuiceFS on common small file workloads while only requiring S3 and no 3rd party database”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “JuiceFS is a distributed POSIX file system built on top of Redis and S3” “Doesn’t require an external database (just a s3 bucket) and is a single binary.”
Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead” “which doesn’t require a 3rd party database, just a s3 bucket”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “S3 Files and the changing face of S3” Works well with SQLite and Postgres
“It works great out the box with SQLite”
Comment from 11 Dec 2025 in “Litestream VFS” “SQLite works great with ZeroFS”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “S3 Files and the changing face of S3” “it works great with Postgres”
Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “Litestream Writable VFS” Strong POSIX semantics and durability
“It uses an LSM-tree database backed by S3, which allows it to implement proper POSIX semantics with actual performance.”
Comment from 3 Dec 2025 in “MinIO is now in maintenance-mode” “ZeroFS has well defined durability semantics, guarantees which are much stronger than local block devices.”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “Native ZFS VDEV for Object Storage (OpenZFS Summit)” “zerofs mount has durable fsync and fcntl byte-range locking.”
Comment from 12 Jul 2026 in “ZeroFS vs. Amazon S3 Files” Handles git and Linux-sized repos
“Works pretty awesomely with git workloads, even Linux sized trees.”
Comment from 19 Sep 2026 in “You can run Git on object storage if you re-make packfiles” “it works great on linux-sized repos”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “I taught a bucket to speak Git”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Unclear latency and durability claims
“you should remove the “at rest in S3” footnote from the write latency on the frontpage of the website, because that is not what is measured”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: ZeroFS – A log-structured filesystem for S3” “the fsync is not timed, so this is just the latency of either the network or in kernel file operations”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: ZeroFS – A log-structured filesystem for S3” “by being unclear about this it just feels like a scam.”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: ZeroFS – A log-structured filesystem for S3” Risky to trust with data
“it feels a little scary to trust all my files”
Comment from 11 Jul 2026 in “ZeroFS vs. Amazon S3 Files” “Entrusting data storage to a vibe coded filesystem seems imprudent.”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: ZeroFS – A log-structured filesystem for S3” Performance concerns and extra overhead
“seems like a lot of extra steps that probably degrade performance”
Comment from 12 Jul 2026 in “ZeroFS vs. Amazon S3 Files” “ZeroFS performs horrifically.”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: ZeroFS – A log-structured filesystem for S3” Commercial licensing unclear or broken
“significantly limiting the latter's ability to be easily adopted outside of open source projects”
Comment from 15 Jan 2026 in “JuiceFS is a distributed POSIX file system built on top of Redis and S3” “the commercial license link https://www.zerofs.net/licensing is a 404 page”
Comment from 7 Aug 2026 in “Celld: Self-hosted, distributed Durable Objects”
Other object storage filesystems people recommend
The two most recommended other object storage filesystems, 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.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZeroFSThis page | 14 | 14 | 50% | 9 | — | — |
| Amazon S3 Files | 9 | 10 | 47% | 2 | — | — |
| s3fs | 5 | 4 | 56% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 45 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Works pretty awesomely with git workloads, even Linux sized trees.”
“object storage makes an excellent easy to scale and manage disaggregation layer”
“the commercial license link https://www.zerofs.net/licensing is a 404 page”
“ZeroFS might help here to put the actual storage on an S3 compatible object store?”
“You are right i was trying to overengineer things.”
“zerofs mount has durable fsync and fcntl byte-range locking.”
“seems like a lot of extra steps that probably degrade performance”
“it feels a little scary to trust all my files”
“ZeroFS performs horrifically.”
“you should remove the “at rest in S3” footnote from the write latency on the frontpage of the website, because that is not what is measured”
“I really like this project and want to see it succeed!”
“by being unclear about this it just feels like a scam.”
“the fsync is not timed, so this is just the latency of either the network or in kernel file operations”
“One of the reasons why ZeroFS seems interesting is they use SlateDB under the hood”
“Read/write operations in object storage are _far more_ expensive than stored bytes.”
“Entrusting data storage to a vibe coded filesystem seems imprudent.”
“Would probably be great to have ZeroFS backed PVs for the K8s folks”
“it works great on linux-sized repos”
“Yes, that should work fine!”
“Absolutely, and much, much more than that.”
“My testing went well. I was able to mount ZeroFS as NFS and write a 100M file to the mount point.”
“Should do a great job at this.”
“which doesn’t require a 3rd party database, just a s3 bucket”
“SQLite works great with ZeroFS”
“Doesn’t require an external database (just a s3 bucket) and is a single binary.”
“it works great with Postgres”
“Well that's a big limiting factor that needs to be at the front in any distributed filesystem comparison.”
“significantly limiting the latter's ability to be easily adopted outside of open source projects”
“beats it handily and easier deployment to boot”
“outperforms JuiceFS on common small file workloads while only requiring S3 and no 3rd party database”
“ZeroFS has well defined durability semantics, guarantees which are much stronger than local block devices.”
“ZeroFS doesn't exploit ZFS strengths with no native ZFS support, just an afterthought with NBD + SlateDB LSM”
“I went an alternate route with NFS/9P... this approach has various advantages while being much more workable than fuse.”
“that's ZeroFS storage backend and it's been great!”
“ZeroFS looks really good.”
“Wow, that's a very cool project.”
“allows to scale IO ressources quite crazily”
“Yes this approach might be better.”
“It works great out the box with SQLite”
“It uses an LSM-tree database backed by S3, which allows it to implement proper POSIX semantics with actual performance.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.