Garage vs Amazon S3
Is it time to switch? We break down the differences so you can stop bleeding money.
Choose Garage.
If you want to own your data, save money, and avoid vendor lock-in, Garage is open source and community-driven.
What Actually Matters
No fluff — just the differences that affect your decision
Garage is open source (AGPL-3.0). Amazon S3 isn't. You can fork it, audit it, host it yourself — no permission needed. That matters.
Garage lets you self-host with Docker — your data, your rules. Amazon S3? Cloud only. If privacy matters, that's a dealbreaker.
Garage dominates with 4.7k GitHub stars vs 0. Bigger community = more plugins, more answers on Stack Overflow, faster bug fixes.
Garage is built in Rust — you can read the source, contribute, or fork it. Amazon S3 is closed-source, so you're trusting their engineering.
Try both — most offer free tiers. The right pick depends on your stack size, team, and tolerance for DevOps.
Garage
An open-source distributed object storage service tailored for self-hosting.
Why Choose Garage
- ✓True open-source (AGPLv3)
- ✓Lightweight and runs anywhere
- ✓Built-in replication and cluster management
Drawbacks
- ×Lacks some enterprise features of MinIO
Amazon S3
Object storage built to retrieve any amount of data from anywhere.
Why Choose Amazon S3
- ✓99.999999999% durability (11 nines)
- ✓Scales to virtually unlimited storage
- ✓Pay only for what you use
Drawbacks
- ×Egress costs can surprise you
- ×Complex IAM/bucket policy configuration
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