SeaweedFS

SeaweedFS is a distributed storage system that serves S3 objects, Iceberg tables, and POSIX files from one cluster. It suits teams that need several storage interfaces alongside large-scale capacity. Its production license requirement and separately purchased support make cost planning as important as its technical breadth.

Overview

SeaweedFS brings object, file, and table access together, with S3, POSIX mounts, HDFS-compatible access, an Iceberg REST catalog, and WebDAV. The product is designed to scale from gigabytes to petabytes and support billions of files. That breadth can simplify a mixed-storage architecture, but it also means production use is not free, even for small deployments.

Key features

The built-in Iceberg catalog connects to Spark, Trino, Dremio, and DuckDB, making SeaweedFS a fit for teams that want storage and table-catalog access in the same cluster. S3 compatibility, object versioning, lifecycle rules, immutability, and cross-region replication cover common object-storage needs.

Enterprise adds meaningful recovery and resilience controls. Admins can recover deleted files within a configurable retention window; the free 25 TB trial limits that window to one hour. Point-in-time recovery can rewind a folder, bucket, or object, including deletes and overwrites, with a preview before changes are applied. Enterprise also repairs missing or corrupted erasure-coding shards and checks them periodically against checksums.

Customizable erasure coding can use a 20+4 ratio with 1.2× storage overhead, according to the maker. Enterprise Admin UI supports OIDC sign-in and role mapping, with examples including Keycloak, Okta, Azure AD, and Microsoft ADFS. The deployment guide offers an official repository binary and the chrislusf/seaweedfs-enterprise container image.

Pricing

SeaweedFS is freemium, but its free allowance is limited by purpose rather than cluster size: development and testing under 25 TB need no license, while every production deployment requires a paid capacity license. Capacity billing counts used storage including replication and erasure-coding overhead, so protection choices affect the bill.

• Community support: free, for any cluster size. It includes GitHub issues and discussions and public documentation, with no guaranteed response time.
• Development & testing: free, under 25 TB and for development and testing only. It is not a production option.
• Capacity license — Monthly: $2 a month, billed pay as you go. It licenses production use based on used storage, including protection overhead.
• Capacity license — Yearly: $20 a year, billed with simplified billing and saving about 17%. It has the same storage basis and production requirement as monthly billing.
• Enterprise 5 PB+: custom pricing for 5 PB or more, with volume discounts and custom contracts and invoicing.

Support is optional and sold separately from capacity. Essential support costs $2,000 a year for clusters up to 100 TB, with private email support, a 5-business-day response, and one advisory hour per month. Small Production support is $5,000 a year for up to 250 TB, with a 3-business-day response, two monthly advisory hours, and an annual configuration review. Growth support costs $15,000 a year for up to 1 PB; it includes a 2–3-business-day response, four monthly advisory hours, upgrade guidance, and deployment assistance.

For larger or more critical environments, Standard support costs $40,000 a year for multi-petabyte deployments, with private Slack and email, a 1-business-day response, eight advisory hours monthly, and architecture and deployment assistance. Critical support costs $85,000 a year for revenue-bearing workloads, with a 1-hour P1 response, private Slack, email, and Zoom, direct engineering escalation, and up to 12 advisory hours monthly. If an Enterprise license expires, data remains accessible through the open-source implementation, but self-healing features are disabled.

Platforms

SeaweedFS supports API access and Linux, macOS, Windows, and self-hosted deployments. That makes it suited to infrastructure teams managing their own storage cluster rather than users looking for a hosted, end-user application.

Who it's for

Choose SeaweedFS when one self-hosted cluster needs to serve object, file, and Iceberg workloads, especially where enterprise recovery, shard repair, and identity integration matter. It is a weaker fit for production teams seeking a no-license open-source deployment or bundled support; production licensing is required at any size, and support adds a substantial separate annual cost.

Pros and cons

• Pro: Multiple access protocols and an Iceberg catalog in one cluster can serve varied workloads without requiring separate storage systems for each interface.
• Pro: Enterprise recovery includes both deleted-file restoration and point-in-time rollback, with preview before changes are applied.
• Pro: Automated shard repair and checksum checks address missing, damaged, and silent corruption risks.
• Con: Production requires a paid capacity license regardless of deployment size, so the free development allowance does not translate into free production.
• Con: Support is a separate purchase, and the listed annual tiers range from 2000.00 USD to 85000.00 USD.
• Con: License expiry disables self-healing features, so organizations relying on them must account for renewal continuity.

Alternatives

For broader comparisons, see Distributed File System Software, Software-Defined Storage Software, and Storage Replication Software.

MooseFS is worth considering if its free Community plan, with a single active master and single-parity erasure coding, suits the deployment better. Hadoop Distributed File System is a free Apache-licensed, self-hosted cluster option. JuiceFS offers a free self-hosted Community Edition with community support through GitHub and Discord.

OpenAFS is a free open-source distributed filesystem. Quobyte has a free edition capped at 150 TB. Ceph is free open-source distributed storage, with a running cluster required for block storage. XtreemFS is a free BSD-licensed option. BeeGFS is another freemium option.

Verdict

SeaweedFS is a strong choice for infrastructure teams that want object, file, and Iceberg access in one scalable cluster, backed by enterprise recovery and data-protection features. Choose it when those capabilities justify production licensing and separate support costs; look elsewhere if free production use or lower-cost bundled support is a priority.