Cloudianvs
MinIO
MinIO: Open source S3-compatible object storage with no licence fee, if you can carry the operational burden yourself
Cloudian
S3-compatible on-premises object storage with object lock immutability
As of 1 September 2026, Cloudian's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. Object storage you run in your own data centre with an S3 API, bought mainly so backups can be made immutable without sending data to a public cloud. Softwr lists it under File Storage. Cloudian is made by Cloudian, Inc., available on Linux.
Overview
What Cloudian does
Cloudian HyperStore is software-defined object storage deployed on commodity servers or as Cloudian appliances, presenting an S3-compatible API. It supports erasure coding across nodes and sites, multi-tenancy, and S3 Object Lock, which enforces write-once-read-many retention that even an administrator cannot override during the retention period. The object lock capability is the commercial driver. Ransomware operators routinely target backup repositories, and an immutable on-premises target defeats that, which is why Cloudian appears so often as the backup landing zone behind Veeam, Commvault, Rubrik and Veritas. Compared with public cloud object storage, the argument is total cost at scale and the absence of egress charges: restoring a hundred terabytes from your own array costs nothing, while restoring the same volume from a public cloud can cost more than a year of storing it. That asymmetry is the fact that changes shortlists, and it only appears during an incident. Buyers are enterprises, government agencies, universities and media organisations with multi-petabyte estates or data residency requirements. The trade-off is that you now operate storage. You buy, rack, patch and eventually refresh the hardware, and the operational headcount that a public cloud absorbs comes back onto your payroll.
What people use it 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
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about 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.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Cloudian
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- CloudianvsWasabi
Wasabi: Cloud object storage with no egress fees, if you are willing to place the data off site
- CloudianvsBackblaze
Backblaze: Cheaper cloud storage per terabyte for archive use where on-premises operation is not required
Pricing
What Cloudian costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Cloudian HyperStore
On request
- Licensed per usable terabyte, subscription or perpetual
- Software-only on your hardware or as Cloudian appliances
- No egress or API request charges
- Support tiers quoted alongside the licence
Capabilities
Features
S3 API compatibility
Works with applications and backup software written for Amazon S3 without modification
Object Lock
WORM immutability that survives administrator credential compromise for the retention period
Erasure coding
Data protection across nodes, racks and sites without full replication overhead
Multi-tenancy
Quality of service, quotas and billing reporting per tenant for service providers
Hybrid tiering
Policy-based tiering of cold objects out to public cloud storage
HyperStore appliances
Prebuilt hardware nodes for organisations that do not want to certify their own servers
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
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.
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.
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.
Keep looking
Where to go from Cloudian
- Cloudian alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Cloudian pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Cloudian badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All File Storage softwareThe full category
- Best File Storage softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best File Storage software for
Compare Cloudian with
- MinIO
- Backblaze
- IDrive e2
- Scality RING
- Storj
- Cloudflare R2
- Panzura
- Tigris
- Veeam Backup & Replication
- Barracuda Backup
- Ceph
- Arq Backup
- Sync.com
- Tresorit
- VAST Data
- Scality RING
- Storj
- Tigris
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Cloudian, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Cloudian
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What people switch to, and what they give up
Cloudian pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Cloudian
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