MinIO vs AWS S3
When it comes to cloud storage services, MinIO and Amazon S3 might be two of the most popular choices out there. Both have tons of features to offer and have their own advantages and limitations. However, it's important to make sure you choose the right one for your needs. After all, you don't want to end up paying for more than what you need or get less than what you're paying for.
In this blog post, we'll provide an unbiased and factual comparison between MinIO and AWS S3 so that you can make an informed decision. We'll talk about various aspects such as cost, performance, features, and compatibility.
Cost
Cost is one of the most important factors to consider when choosing cloud storage services. Here's a quick overview of the pricing plans for both MinIO and AWS S3:
| Service | Pricing |
|---|---|
| MinIO | Free (open-source) or $10,000+ per year for enterprise support |
| AWS S3 | $0.023 - $0.0004 per GB (depending on storage class and region) and additional charges for API requests and data transfer out |
Both services offer flexible pricing plans that are suitable for different needs. However, MinIO can be a more cost-effective option if you're looking for open-source software or don't require enterprise-level support. On the other hand, AWS S3 might be more suitable if you need a more scalable and enterprise-grade solution.
Performance
Performance is another crucial factor to consider when choosing cloud storage services. In general, MinIO has faster performance than AWS S3 due to its distributed nature and usage of direct-attached drives. It also provides better read and write speeds for large objects while AWS S3 has some limitations with both read and write operations.
To give you a better idea of the performance difference, here are some benchmark results conducted by MinIO and AWS:
| Service | Read Speed | Write Speed |
|---|---|---|
| MinIO | 1.51 GB/s | 1.36 GB/s |
| AWS S3 | 137 MB/s | 107 MB/s |
As you can see, MinIO has significantly higher read and write speeds compared to AWS S3. However, it's worth noting that the actual performance can vary depending on various factors such as the hardware used, network latency, and object size.
Features
Both MinIO and AWS S3 have tons of features to offer, but there are some notable differences. Here's a quick comparison:
| Service | Features |
|---|---|
| MinIO | - Supports AWS S3 API - Robust data protection - Scalable - Concurrent access - Cross-region replication |
| AWS S3 | - Supports AWS S3 API - Lifecycle policies - Versioning - Object locking - Intelligent-Tiering |
In general, both services offer similar features with a few differences here and there. However, AWS S3 has some additional features that might be useful for specific use cases such as object locking and intelligent-tiering. On the other hand, MinIO can be more suitable for distributed and scalable environments.
Compatibility
Compatibility is another important factor to consider when choosing cloud storage services. MinIO is compatible with the AWS S3 API, which means that you can use MinIO as a drop-in replacement for AWS S3 without any changes to your code. It also works seamlessly with Kubernetes and other container orchestration tools.
AWS S3, on the other hand, is more tightly integrated with the AWS ecosystem and provides better compatibility with other AWS services. It also offers a wider range of storage classes and integrations with other services such as Amazon EFS and Amazon Glacier.