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Alibaba Cloud vs Longhorn

Alibaba Cloud logo

Alibaba Cloud

Cloud

Asia's leading cloud computing provider

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Longhorn logo

Longhorn

Cloud

Open source distributed block storage for Kubernetes, incubating at the CNCF

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Alibaba Cloud technical support is a separate subscription, from $19.99 a month for Developer up to $8,000 a month for Enterprise, with only Basic included; Longhorn there is no vendor and no SLA, so a production incident at three in the morning is your own problem unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime support separately.
  • They diverge on capability: Alibaba Cloud covers Elastic Compute Service, Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Alibaba Cloud and Longhorn actually diverge.

Attributes where Alibaba Cloud and Longhorn differ
AttributeAlibaba CloudLonghorn
Pricing modelusage-basedOpen source, no licence fee
PlatformsLinux, Windows, Api, CliLinux, Kubernetes
Founded2009Unknown

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Cloud).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Alibaba Cloud

  • Elastic Compute Service
  • Object Storage Service
  • RDS Database
  • MaxCompute
  • Function Compute
  • CDN
  • Load Balancer
  • API Gateway

Only in Longhorn

  • Per-volume controllers
  • Synchronous replication
  • Snapshots and backups
  • Volume expansion
  • Disaster recovery volumes
  • Web interface

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Alibaba Cloud

  • Cloud compute and storage with a strong footprint in China and Asia Pacificnot Longhorn
  • Pay-as-you-go infrastructure without upfront commitmentnot Longhorn
  • Committed-use discounts through savings plans for steady workloadsnot Longhorn
  • CDN and data transfer packages for content deliverynot Longhorn

Longhorn

  • An on-premises Kubernetes cluster with local disks and no SAN that needs replicated persistent volumesnot Alibaba Cloud
  • Edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole clusternot Alibaba Cloud
  • A K3s deployment where the storage layer must be light enough to run alongside the workloadsnot Alibaba Cloud
  • A team that wants snapshots and S3 backups of persistent volumes without paying per-node storage licencesnot Alibaba Cloud

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Alibaba Cloud

  • Technical support is a separate subscription, from $19.99 a month for Developer up to $8,000 a month for Enterprise, with only Basic included
  • Service prices are not shown as a rate card and route through a calculator or sales
  • Committed discounts require savings plans, reserved instances or capacity packages rather than being automatic

Longhorn

  • There is no vendor and no SLA, so a production incident at three in the morning is your own problem unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime support separately.
  • Synchronous replication across nodes means write latency depends on the slowest replica and the network between nodes, which makes it a poor fit for latency-sensitive databases.
  • Every replica is a full copy, so three-way replication consumes three times the raw capacity, unlike erasure-coded systems that are far more space efficient.
  • It is designed for block storage on modest clusters and does not scale to the node counts or throughput that Ceph or a commercial array handles, so growth eventually forces a migration.
  • Recovery from certain degraded states, such as a volume stuck detaching or replicas failing to rebuild, requires manual intervention and knowledge of Longhorn internals that is not widely held.

Pricing, plan by plan

Alibaba Cloud

Free
  • Free TrialFree
    • Free tier credits
    • ECS instances
    • Cloud storage
  • Pay-as-You-GoFree
    • Flexible billing
    • No commitments
    • Global reach

Longhorn

Free
  • LonghornFree
    • Apache 2.0 licensed, no licence fee
    • Community support via GitHub and Slack only
    • No vendor SLA or escalation path

Which should you pick?

Choose Alibaba Cloud if

  • You need elastic compute service.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Windows, Api, Cli.
  • You also want object storage service.
Alibaba Cloud review

Choose Longhorn if

  • You need per-volume controllers.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Kubernetes.
  • You also want synchronous replication.
Longhorn review

Questions people ask

Is Alibaba Cloud or Longhorn better?
Neither clearly leads. Alibaba Cloud starts at Free and Longhorn at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Alibaba Cloud or Longhorn?
Alibaba Cloud starts at Free and Longhorn at Free.
Does Alibaba Cloud or Longhorn run on more platforms?
Alibaba Cloud runs on Linux, Windows, Api, Cli. Longhorn runs on Linux, Kubernetes.
Can I use Alibaba Cloud for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Alibaba Cloud best used for?
Alibaba Cloud is most often used for cloud compute and storage with a strong footprint in china and asia pacific, pay-as-you-go infrastructure without upfront commitment, committed-use discounts through savings plans for steady workloads, cdn and data transfer packages for content delivery. Of those, cloud compute and storage with a strong footprint in china and asia pacific and pay-as-you-go infrastructure without upfront commitment are not what Longhorn is typically brought in for.
What can Alibaba Cloud do that Longhorn cannot?
Alibaba Cloud covers Elastic Compute Service, Object Storage Service, RDS Database, MaxCompute. Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers, Synchronous replication, Snapshots and backups, Volume expansion.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Longhorn: Who do we call when it breaks?

Nobody, unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime, which includes commercial support for Longhorn. This is the decisive question for production use.

Longhorn: How much capacity does replication cost?

Full copies, so three replicas means three times the raw capacity. Budget accordingly rather than assuming erasure coding efficiency.

Longhorn: Is it suitable for production databases?

For modest workloads yes, but synchronous replication adds write latency and high-transaction databases usually want something faster.

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