Is Cloudian or LucidLink better?

Neither clearly leads. Cloudian starts at On request and LucidLink at $7/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Cloudian or LucidLink?

Cloudian starts at On request and LucidLink at $7/month.

Does Cloudian or LucidLink run on more platforms?

Cloudian runs on Linux. LucidLink runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS.

What is Cloudian best used for?

Cloudian is most often used for a backup team needing an immutable target so a compromised administrator account cannot delete the backups, an organisation restoring hundreds of terabytes regularly where public cloud egress charges make cloud storage untenable, a university or government body with data residency rules preventing use of public cloud object storage, a media archive holding petabytes of finished content where per-terabyte capital cost beats per-gigabyte monthly cloud fees. Of those, a backup team needing an immutable target so a compromised administrator account cannot delete the backups and an organisation restoring hundreds of terabytes regularly where public cloud egress charges make cloud storage untenable are not what LucidLink is typically brought in for.

What can Cloudian do that LucidLink cannot?

Cloudian covers S3 API compatibility, Object Lock, Erasure coding, Multi-tenancy. LucidLink covers Filespaces, On-demand streaming, Client-side encryption, Customer-managed keys.

File Storage · head to head

Cloudian vs LucidLink

Cloudian

File Storage

S3-compatible on-premises object storage with object lock immutability

From: On request
Rated: -

Full review Website

LucidLink

File Storage

Cloud filesystem that streams large media files on demand instead of syncing them

From: $7/month
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Cloudian you operate the hardware, so capacity planning, firmware, node failures and a refresh cycle every five years return as costs that a public cloud bill hides.; LucidLink additional storage at $7 to $8 per 100GB per month is roughly three to four times raw S3 pricing, so teams with large cold archives pay a heavy premium for data they rarely touch.
They diverge on capability: Cloudian covers S3 API compatibility, LucidLink covers Filespaces.
Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Cloudian and LucidLink actually diverge.

Attributes where Cloudian and LucidLink differ
Attribute	Cloudian	LucidLink
Starting price	On request	$7/month
Pricing model	quote	Per member per month plus storage
Platforms	Linux	macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), category (File Storage).

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 Cloudian

S3 API compatibility
Object Lock
Erasure coding
Multi-tenancy
Hybrid tiering
HyperStore appliances

Only in LucidLink

Filespaces
On-demand streaming
Client-side encryption
Customer-managed keys
Bring your own storage
Snapshots

What people use each for

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

Cloudian

A backup team needing an immutable target so a compromised administrator account cannot delete the backupsnot LucidLink
An organisation restoring hundreds of terabytes regularly where public cloud egress charges make cloud storage untenablenot LucidLink
A university or government body with data residency rules preventing use of public cloud object storagenot LucidLink
A media archive holding petabytes of finished content where per-terabyte capital cost beats per-gigabyte monthly cloud feesnot LucidLink

LucidLink

A post house with editors in three countries cutting from one shared 4K rush library without shipping drivesnot Cloudian
A broadcaster giving freelancers access to a project for a fortnight without provisioning VPN and a NAS mountnot Cloudian
A game studio sharing multi-gigabyte asset builds where syncing every file to every workstation is impracticalnot Cloudian
An architecture practice opening large point cloud and BIM files from a laptop on a hotel connectionnot Cloudian

Where each one falls short

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

Cloudian

You operate the hardware, so capacity planning, firmware, node failures and a refresh cycle every five years return as costs that a public cloud bill hides.
Per-terabyte licensing plus servers means high upfront cost, and the crossover point against public cloud only arrives at meaningful scale, typically hundreds of terabytes and up.
S3 compatibility is high but not identical to Amazon, so occasional applications depending on newer or less common S3 features need testing rather than assumption.
Small deployments need a minimum node count for erasure coding to be meaningful, which sets a practical floor on entry cost regardless of how little data you have.
Performance is object storage performance, so it is not a substitute for block or high-throughput file storage and buyers occasionally deploy it for the wrong workload.

LucidLink

Additional storage at $7 to $8 per 100GB per month is roughly three to four times raw S3 pricing, so teams with large cold archives pay a heavy premium for data they rarely touch.
Included storage is pooled per member, so adding a seat is also how you buy capacity, and teams with a few heavy users and many light ones buy seats purely for the gigabytes.
Performance is bounded by the network link and local cache size, so a workstation with a small cache on a poor connection performs far worse than the demonstrations suggest.
Small-file and metadata-heavy workloads such as code repositories, node modules trees or build outputs perform badly, so it is not a general-purpose file server replacement.
Customer-managed keys and bring your own storage are Enterprise-tier options, so organisations that cannot let a vendor hold their keys cannot use the published pricing at all.

Pricing, plan by plan

Cloudian

On request

Cloudian HyperStore$undefined/year
- Licensed per usable terabyte, subscription or perpetual
- Software-only on your hardware or as Cloudian appliances
- No egress or API request charges

LucidLink

$7/month

Starter$7/month
- 100GB included per member, pooled across the team
- Additional storage $7 per 100GB per month
- Client-side encryption
Business$32/month
- $27 per member per month billed annually
- 400GB included per member, pooled across the team
- Additional storage $8 per 100GB per month
Enterprise$undefined/year
- Custom pricing and storage terms
- Customer-managed encryption keys
- Bring your own object storage bucket

Which should you pick?

Choose Cloudian if

You need s3 api compatibility.
You work on Linux.
You also want object lock.

Cloudian review

Choose LucidLink if

You need filespaces.
You work on macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS.
You also want on-demand streaming.

LucidLink review

Questions people ask

Is Cloudian or LucidLink better?: Neither clearly leads. Cloudian starts at On request and LucidLink at $7/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Cloudian or LucidLink?: Cloudian starts at On request and LucidLink at $7/month.
Does Cloudian or LucidLink run on more platforms?: Cloudian runs on Linux. LucidLink runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, iOS.
What is Cloudian best used for?: Cloudian is most often used for a backup team needing an immutable target so a compromised administrator account cannot delete the backups, an organisation restoring hundreds of terabytes regularly where public cloud egress charges make cloud storage untenable, a university or government body with data residency rules preventing use of public cloud object storage, a media archive holding petabytes of finished content where per-terabyte capital cost beats per-gigabyte monthly cloud fees. Of those, a backup team needing an immutable target so a compromised administrator account cannot delete the backups and an organisation restoring hundreds of terabytes regularly where public cloud egress charges make cloud storage untenable are not what LucidLink is typically brought in for.
What can Cloudian do that LucidLink cannot?: Cloudian covers S3 API compatibility, Object Lock, Erasure coding, Multi-tenancy. LucidLink covers Filespaces, On-demand streaming, Client-side encryption, Customer-managed keys.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Cloudian: Does object lock really stop ransomware deleting backups?

Within the retention period, yes, provided the lock is set in compliance mode. That is precisely why it is the common answer to backup-targeting ransomware.

LucidLink: What does storage actually cost?

$7 per 100GB per month on Starter and $8 per 100GB per month on Business, above the pooled allowance. Model this separately from the seat cost.

Cloudian: Are there egress charges?

No. That is the central cost argument against public cloud object storage, and it only becomes visible when you have to restore at volume.

LucidLink: Can we hold our own encryption keys?

On the Enterprise tier, yes, along with pointing the filespace at your own S3 or Azure bucket. Not on Starter or Business.

Cloudian: Can we use our own servers?

Yes, HyperStore is software-defined and runs on qualified commodity hardware, or you can buy Cloudian appliances if you would rather not certify your own.

LucidLink: Does it work for source code?

Not well. It is built for large sequential reads. Many small files is the workload it handles worst.

Cloudian vs LucidLink

Cloudian

LucidLink

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Cloudian

Only in LucidLink

What people use each for

Cloudian

LucidLink

Where each one falls short

Cloudian

LucidLink

Pricing, plan by plan

Cloudian

LucidLink

Which should you pick?

Choose Cloudian if

Choose LucidLink if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Cloudian

More on LucidLink

Keep looking

Other head to heads