How much does MinIO cost?

MinIO publishes 2 tiers, from Free for Community (AGPL v3) up to On request for AIStor. The entry tier costs nothing.

What is the difference between Community (AGPL v3) and AIStor on MinIO?

AIStor costs On request against Free, and adds commercial licence removing agpl obligations, full management console, vendor support with response commitments, capacity based subscription.

Which file storage tools can I use without paying?

3 of the 8 file storage tools listed alongside MinIO have a free tier: Google Drive, Storj, Cloudflare R2.

Does MinIO charge per user?

The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 2 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 MinIO 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 MinIO 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 MinIO covering price, platforms and features.

File Storage · pricing

MinIO pricing

MinIO publishes 2 tiers. Below is each one, what it adds over the tier beneath it, and where the ladder stops being worth climbing for most people.

As of 31 August 2026, MinIO pricing is free across 2 published tiers. 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: 2
Free tier: Yes

MinIO 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.

MinIO pricing tiers
Plan	Price	Features listed	Step up from the tier below
Community (AGPL v3)	Free	4	Entry tier
AIStor	On request	4	Priced on request

What each tier adds

The set difference between each tier's feature list and the one beneath it. Where a tier lists nothing new, the vendor has either stopped repeating the inherited list or the tier raises limits rather than adding capability, the record does not distinguish the two, so this page does not either.

Community (AGPL v3)

Free

The entry tier. It covers full server functionality, erasure coding and replication, object browser only in the web console, community support.

AIStor

On request

Over Community (AGPL v3), this tier adds:

Commercial licence removing AGPL obligations
Full management console
Vendor support with response commitments
Capacity based subscription

Where MinIO stops being free

Community (AGPL v3), Free

Full server functionality
Erasure coding and replication
Object browser only in the web console
Community support

No paid tier on record

MinIO lists a free tier and no priced tier above it in the record we hold.

What the product covers

The full MinIO 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

S3 API implementation
Erasure coding
Single binary deployment
Bucket replication
Object locking and versioning
Identity provider integration

People bring MinIO in for providing an s3 endpoint inside an air gapped or regulated network where a cloud bucket is not permitted, backing a kubernetes platform with object storage that lives on the same hardware as the cluster, standing up s3 semantics in ci so tests exercise the same api path as production, fronting local disk shelves with an s3 interface so applications only ever learn one storage api. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to MinIO 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.

MinIO entry price against other File Storage tools
Tool	Entry price	Model	Rated	Head to head
MinIO (this page)	Free	Open source, no licence fee	-
Cloudian	On request	quote	-	vs MinIO
Panzura	On request	quote	-	vs MinIO
VAST Data	On request	quote	-	vs MinIO
Scality RING	On request	quote	-	vs MinIO
LucidLink	$7/month	Per member per month plus storage	-	vs MinIO
Google Drive	Free	Free tier plus paid storage add-on	-	vs MinIO

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 MinIO badges page.

Before you pay for MinIO

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: 2 tiers between Free and On request, with the jump itemised above. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.

MinIO runs on linux, macos, windows, kubernetes, docker, and is published by MinIO Inc of Redwood City, California, United States. The full record is on the MinIO review, and the rest of the category is under best file storage tools.

MinIO pricing on the vendor's own site

MinIO pricing questions

How much does MinIO cost?: MinIO publishes 2 tiers, from Free for Community (AGPL v3) up to On request for AIStor. The entry tier costs nothing.
Does MinIO have a free plan?: Yes. The Community (AGPL v3) tier costs nothing and covers full server functionality, erasure coding and replication, object browser only in the web console.
What is the difference between Community (AGPL v3) and AIStor on MinIO?: AIStor costs On request against Free, and adds commercial licence removing agpl obligations, full management console, vendor support with response commitments, capacity based subscription.
Which file storage tools can I use without paying?: 3 of the 8 file storage tools listed alongside MinIO have a free tier: Google Drive, Storj, Cloudflare R2.
What am I actually paying for with MinIO?: The record lists 6 features across 1 area: other. In practice it is brought in for providing an s3 endpoint inside an air gapped or regulated network where a cloud bucket is not permitted, backing a kubernetes platform with object storage that lives on the same hardware as the cluster, standing up s3 semantics in ci so tests exercise the same api path as production.
Does MinIO charge per user?: The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 2 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 MinIO 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 MinIO 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 MinIO covering price, platforms and features.