Cloudian
S3-compatible on-premises object storage with object lock immutability
Pricing on request
Category
The best File Storage software
File Storage & Backup software and applications
- Tools listed
- 30
All 30 file storage tools
Every listing shows its published starting price on the same footing, so a shortlist does not take ten tabs.
What file storage software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 30 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $0Tigris
- Median entry price
- $6across 19 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $250Veeam Backup & Replication
- Publish a $0 plan
- 9of 30
Paid file storage plans in this set start anywhere from $0 a month for Tigris to $250 for Veeam Backup & Replication. The median entry price across the 19 tools that publish one is $6, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is pCloud's at $1,190 a month, 4.8× the highest entry price on the page. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.
9 of 30 publish a $0 plan, and 3 of those charge nothing at all. 13 tools have no free tier of any kind.
10 of 30 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
Tigris pricingVeeam Backup & Replication pricingpCloud plans
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 30 file storage listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- subscription
- 10
- quote
- 5
- Open source, no licence fee
- 2
- Per terabyte per month
- 2
- Free tier plus paid storage add-on
- 1
- freemium
- 1
- one-time
- 1
- open-source
- 1
- Per gigabyte stored per month
- 1
- Per member per month plus storage
- 1
- Usage-based tiered storage with per-request fees
- 1
Separately, 10 of 30 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What “File Storage” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 30 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- Object Storage9
- s3-compatible6
- disaster-recovery3
- ransomware-protection3
- affordable2
- cloud-backup2
- encrypted2
- enterprise-backup2
- Erasure Coding2
- multi-cloud2
- Open Source2
- personal2
Carried by a single tool: Agpl, automatic, Cloud File Storage, Egress Free, Global File System, liveboot, Nvme, Self-Hosted. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
9 of 30 file storage tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with no published rate card, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.
Read the spread before you read the features
$0 to $250 is a $250 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $250 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
11 of 30 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 2 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, no published rate card, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 11 billing models: subscription on 10 listings, quote on 5, and 9 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare file storage tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- Cloudian vs Google Drive
- Google Drive vs LucidLink
- LucidLink vs Panzura
- Panzura vs Scality RING
- Scality RING vs VAST Data
- VAST Data vs Cloudflare R2
- Cloudflare R2 vs Storj
- Storj vs IDrive e2
Go straight to the numbers
- Cloudianpricingalternatives
- Google Drivepricingalternatives
- LucidLinkpricingalternatives
- Panzurapricingalternatives
- Scality RINGpricingalternatives
- VAST Datapricingalternatives
Questions people ask about file storage software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How much does file storage software cost?
- Across the 30 file storage tools listed here, paid plans start between $0 and $250 a month, with a median entry price of $6. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $1,190 a month (pCloud). 9 of 30 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest file storage software?
- 3 of the 30 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Tigris has the lowest published entry price at $0 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free file storage software?
- Yes, 9 of 30 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 3 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- How is file storage software usually billed?
- subscription (10), quote (5), Open source, no licence fee (2), Per terabyte per month (2), plus 7 less common arrangements, counted across the 30 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 10 of 30 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does file storage software actually cover?
- The 30 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are object storage (9), s3-compatible (6), disaster-recovery (3), ransomware-protection (3), affordable (2). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under file storage may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do file storage tools offer?
- 25 of 30 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 11 of 30 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many file storage tools are listed on Softwr?
- 30 approved file storage listings appear on this page, including Cloudian, Google Drive, LucidLink, Panzura. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/file-storage, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep this
Email me these 30 picks
The shortlist for “File Storage”, plus a note if any of their prices change.
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Neighbouring categories
Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.