File Storage · pricing
Ceph pricing
Ceph publishes a single tier. Below is what it costs, what it covers, and how that compares with the file storage tools listed alongside it.
As of 31 August 2026, Ceph pricing is free. Figures are the vendor's list prices as recorded on this page's last check; the vendor's site is the final word.
- Entry price
- Free
- Model
- Open source, no licence fee
- Tiers
- 1
- Free tier
- Yes
Ceph plans, side by side
Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.
| Plan | Price | Features listed | Step up from the tier below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ceph | Free | 4 | Entry tier |
Where Ceph stops being free
Ceph, Free
- Full functionality, no capacity limit
- Object, block and file interfaces
- Community support via mailing list and Slack
- Vendor supported builds available separately from IBM and SUSE
No paid tier on record
Ceph lists a free tier and no priced tier above it in the record we hold.
What the product covers
The full Ceph feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.
Other
- RADOS object store
- RADOS Gateway
- RBD block devices
- CephFS
- CRUSH placement
- Erasure coded pools
People bring Ceph in for backing a private cloud where virtual machine disks, shared filesystems and an s3 endpoint all need the same hardware, growing past the point where a proprietary array upgrade costs more than a rack of commodity servers, research and media environments with petabytes of data and staff who can operate storage, providing an s3 endpoint on premises with multi site replication under your own control. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to Ceph are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in File Storage
Too few file storage tools in this directory publish a starting price to quote a meaningful median, so the table below is a like-for-like list rather than a ranking.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Rated | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ceph (this page) | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | |
| Cloudian | On request | quote | - | vs Ceph |
| Panzura | On request | quote | - | vs Ceph |
| VAST Data | On request | quote | - | vs Ceph |
| Scality RING | On request | quote | - | vs Ceph |
| LucidLink | $7/month | Per member per month plus storage | - | vs Ceph |
| Google Drive | Free | Free tier plus paid storage add-on | - | vs Ceph |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the Ceph badges page.
Before you pay for Ceph
Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.
What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: a single tier at Free. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
Ceph runs on linux, and is published by Ceph Foundation (Linux Foundation) of San Francisco, California, United States. The full record is on the Ceph review, and the rest of the category is under best file storage tools.
Ceph pricing questions
- How much does Ceph cost?
- Ceph publishes a single tier, Ceph, at Free.
- Does Ceph have a free plan?
- Yes. The Ceph tier costs nothing and covers full functionality, no capacity limit, object, block and file interfaces, community support via mailing list and slack.
- Which file storage tools can I use without paying?
- 3 of the 8 file storage tools listed alongside Ceph have a free tier: Google Drive, Storj, Cloudflare R2.
- What am I actually paying for with Ceph?
- The record lists 6 features across 1 area: other. In practice it is brought in for backing a private cloud where virtual machine disks, shared filesystems and an s3 endpoint all need the same hardware, growing past the point where a proprietary array upgrade costs more than a rack of commodity servers, research and media environments with petabytes of data and staff who can operate storage.
- Does Ceph charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 1 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
- Are these Ceph prices current?
- They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
- What should I compare Ceph against before paying?
- The closest file storage tools in this directory are Cloudian, Panzura, VAST Data, Scality RING. Each has a side-by-side comparison with Ceph covering price, platforms and features.