MinIO alternatives: six S3-compatible tools tested for local demos

In late 2025 the company behind MinIO decided to abandon the project to pursue other commercial interests, breaking countless Docker Compose demos and CI/CD pipelines that used it to emulate Amazon S3 storage locally. In response, a developer set up a baseline DuckDB and Iceberg stack backed by MinIO, then swapped MinIO out for six candidate replacements, requiring each to ship a Docker image, provide S3 compatibility, and be free to use, with a strong preference for an OSI-approved open-source licence.

S3Proxy (version 3.0.0, Apache 2.0, a Docker image with 5M+ pulls) proved very easy to configure and lightweight. RustFS (1.0.0-alpha.79, Apache 2.0, 100k+ pulls) was rated among the easiest, tied with S3Proxy, and comes with its own GUI, though it remains an alpha release. SeaweedFS (4.06, Apache 2.0, 5M+ pulls) needed some extra work for its auth configuration but ships a basic web UI of its own; the author notes SeaweedFS has offered S3 support since its 0.91 release in 2018, and that its otherwise sparse marketing site can make the project look commercial at first glance despite being open source. Zenko CloudServer (9.2.8, Apache 2.0, Docker images with 5M+ pulls including outdated ones on Docker Hub), formerly called S3 Server, dropped in fairly easily but sits inside a larger Scality toolset called Zenko, which the author found confusing to navigate by name alone.

Garage (1.0.0, AGPL licence, 1M+ pulls) was the hardest to set up: it required a second container just for initial configuration, a separate TOML config file, and different initialisation plumbing than the others; the author needed a friend's help to get it working and calls it excellent for production hygiene but overkill, and something of a hindrance, for local demos. Apache Ozone (2.1.0, Apache 2.0, Docker images with 1M+ pulls), which was spun out of Apache Hadoop in 2020 after being created as part of the HDFS project in 2015, worked but is not lightweight: neither the author nor an AI coding assistant could get it deployed with fewer than four nodes. A seventh candidate, Ceph Object Gateway, was dropped without testing after the author read its installation instructions.

The author's final verdict: SeaweedFS and S3Proxy are keepers; RustFS is a maybe given its alpha status; CloudServer is a probable yes, tempered by discomfort with adopting a larger suite; Garage is a no on configuration complexity; Apache Ozone is a firm no for this use case. Of the six, only Apache Ozone is governed by a nonprofit foundation (the Apache Software Foundation); every other project could, in principle, change its licence unilaterally the way MinIO's owner did. The author also flags that Docker pull counts are an imperfect health signal, since a small number of CI pipelines pulling an image repeatedly can inflate the figure, and that long-running projects maintained by a single contributor carry a bus-factor risk if that person walks away.

An addendum records two later developments: on 2026-01-30, Justin Cormack wrote about implementation details of RustFS and Garage, and on 2026-03-02, developer Ruohang Feng forked MinIO itself into a project called pgsty/minio, promising to maintain a stable, CVE-patched distribution.

Key facts

MinIO's owning company abandoned the project in late 2025 to pursue other commercial interests, breaking demos and build pipelines that used it to emulate S3 locally.
Six alternatives were tested in a DuckDB and Iceberg Docker Compose stack: S3Proxy (3.0.0), RustFS (1.0.0-alpha.79), SeaweedFS (4.06), Zenko CloudServer (9.2.8), Garage (1.0.0, AGPL) and Apache Ozone (2.1.0); a seventh, Ceph Object Gateway, was skipped untested.
SeaweedFS and S3Proxy were the author's picks; Garage needed a friend's help to configure, and Apache Ozone, spun out of Apache Hadoop in 2020, could not be deployed with fewer than four nodes.
Of the six, only Apache Ozone is governed by a foundation (the ASF); the rest could change licence terms unilaterally, as MinIO's owner did.
An addendum notes Justin Cormack wrote about RustFS and Garage internals on 2026-01-30, and Ruohang Feng forked MinIO into pgsty/minio on 2026-03-02, promising a CVE-patched stable distribution.

Why it matters

MinIO had become the default way to fake S3 storage in local demos, tutorials and CI pipelines, so its owner abandoning the project for other commercial interests left a gap that a lot of tooling quietly depended on. The episode also doubles as a reminder that a single company's open-source project can be discontinued at will, which is exactly the risk the author weighs when picking a replacement.

Who it affects

Developers building Docker Compose demos and data-engineering tutorials, such as DuckDB and Iceberg stacks backed by S3-compatible storage, plus CI/CD pipelines that validate S3 compatibility on a single node. It is explicitly not aimed at teams running MinIO in production as self-managed, multi-node distributed storage.

How to use it

All six candidates ship free Docker images under Apache 2.0, except Garage which is AGPL, and each can replace MinIO in a Compose file with modest changes. S3Proxy and RustFS were rated easiest to configure, while S3Proxy and SeaweedFS are the author's picks; RustFS is promising but still on an alpha release; Zenko CloudServer works but ships as part of a larger Scality toolset; Garage and Apache Ozone are the two the author would not choose for this use case, on configuration complexity and node-count grounds respectively.

How solid is it

The comparison is one developer's own hands-on test, published as a blog post and discussed on Hacker News with modest traction (13 points, 11 comments), not a formal benchmark. Ratings cover Docker-image availability, licence and a subjective ease-of-configuration score; no performance or throughput testing was done for any of the six.

Risks and caveats

The author flags Docker pull counts, such as the 5M+ figures for S3Proxy, SeaweedFS and Zenko CloudServer, as an imperfect health signal, since a handful of CI pipelines can inflate them. A couple of the alternatives are maintained largely by a single contributor, which raises a bus-factor risk. And only Apache Ozone is owned by a foundation; every other project, like MinIO before it, could change its licence unilaterally.

“This is completed in https://t.co/RQv387bbKb and will be included in the weekly release.”

— SeaweedFS, in a reply on X