Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead
by Zm44 on 4/7/2026, 11:12:17 AM
Last week SWYX nerd-sniped me into building an Open-source Dropbox.<p>Here is Locker: the ultimate open-source Google Drive/box/Dropbox alternative - Provider agnostic (S3, R2, vercel blob, local) - BYOB (Bring your own bucket) - Virtual file system - QMD Search plugin
Comments
by: kristianc
We've officially come full circle<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224</a>
4/7/2026, 12:24:05 PM
by: dewey
The selling point of Dropbox/Google Drive isn't the storage itself, but that there's app for mobile and desktop operating systems which deeply integrates it in the OS so it's just like a local folder that's magically synced.<p>So it's a cool project, but not really what I'd say is a Dropbox replacement.
4/7/2026, 12:07:05 PM
by: charles_f
Stop paying for banks, AI built this cardboard box that you can store in your toolshed instead!
4/7/2026, 2:01:44 PM
by: ovaistariq
The critical part of Dropbox is not just the storage layer but a combination of their client and server. Even small things like how do you handle conflicting writes to the same file from multiple threads, matter a great deal for data consistency and durability.
4/7/2026, 12:59:30 PM
by: filleokus
Neat! Pricing wise it might not always make sense though to use the commercial blob storages, especially for solo usage.<p>1 TB is roughly 20-30 USD per month at AWS/GCP only in storage, plus traffic and operations. R2 is slightly cheaper and includes traffic.<p>Compared to e.g a Google AI plan where you get 5 TB storage for the same price (25 USD/month) + Gemini Pro thrown in.
4/7/2026, 12:19:22 PM
by: 1a527dd5
Absolutely not. The value isn't in the cloud storage. The value is in the client (DropBox in my case) seamlessly working across all my devices.
4/7/2026, 12:16:06 PM
by: cjonas
Why does getting started have me sign up for an account vs take me to the docs to self host?
4/7/2026, 1:30:37 PM
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4/7/2026, 1:56:18 PM
by: ks2048
I pay Dropbox $120 per year for 2TB. No transfer fees, solid Apps, macOS integration, free APIs.<p>How much on S3? A LOT more.
4/7/2026, 12:40:49 PM
by: adamgordonbell
Looks great!<p>Feature request: Google Drive for desktop.<p>That is the feature that gives your drive as a mounted file system that stream files as you need them.<p>It gives me the ease of having access to a giant amount of files stored in my gdrive without having to worry about the space they take up locally nor moving files up and down.<p>Actually, what solutions to that might already exist? I don't really use the web UI of gdrive as much as use it as a cloud disk drive.
4/7/2026, 1:25:09 PM
by: rkagerer
Why would I want to replace my reliance on them with reliance on Amazon or another cloud provider?<p>I'd rather control the whole stack, even if it means deploying my own hardware to one or more redundant, off-site locations.<p>Edit: Are there robust, open source, self-hosted, S3-compliant engines out there reliable and performant enough to be the backend for this?
4/7/2026, 12:54:24 PM
by: gargan
May I recommend the excellent <a href="https://s3drive.app/" rel="nofollow">https://s3drive.app/</a> which is compatible with S3 and also providers like Proton Drive
4/7/2026, 12:49:11 PM
by: vgr-land
Looks like a good light weight solution to front object storage with a front end and auth. One suggestion is to add the license to the repo. The readme says License: MIT, but there’s no license file.
4/7/2026, 12:08:11 PM
by: npodbielski
I bought 35$/mo 16TB server from OVH. I am running 2 replicas of Garage, one on this server. I am using this for backup for now but probably I will also move my Nextcloud files there and websites. This is fine for now and less pricey than any S3 provider I was able to find.
4/7/2026, 12:24:19 PM
by: pluc
I'd love a local offline alternative, maybe I'll get AI to build it for me
4/7/2026, 12:07:04 PM
by: bovermyer
Very cool idea, but without background file syncing from/to my local machine, it can't replace my cloud storage provider.
4/7/2026, 12:31:43 PM
by: vitalscope
That is a bit like saying “Don’t use a medical analysis app, just interpret your lab results yourself.”<p>Sure, ChatGPT can help, but to use it reliably, you still need enough medical knowledge to ask good questions and evaluate the answers.
4/7/2026, 12:44:18 PM
by: jrochkind1
I wonder if it would be possible to do something like this that had transparent end-to-end encryption.
4/7/2026, 12:26:05 PM
by: noja
Why not just use an FTP server?
4/7/2026, 12:14:12 PM
by: aitchnyu
What happens if the server disappears permanently and only the bucket is up?
4/7/2026, 12:10:37 PM
by: HardwareLust
Just don't spin up your machines in Bahrain or the UAE...
4/7/2026, 12:19:31 PM
by: kardianos
Another option is <a href="https://github.com/drakkan/sftpgo" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/drakkan/sftpgo</a><p>This is in Go, exposes both webdav and SFTP servers, with user and admin web interfaces. You can configure remotes, then compose user space from various locations for each user, some could be local, others remote.
4/7/2026, 12:32:54 PM
by: lain98
I use archive storage class on google cloud, to store old movies and wedding videos, pictures of old vacations.<p>For everything else I use paid onedrive subscription. The biggest problem is user interface with s3 like storage and predictable pricing because remember you also pay for data retrieval and other storage apis, with dropbox etc you pay a fixed amount. Every year or so I roll over data into the bucket.<p>But for infrequently accessed data its fine.
4/7/2026, 1:07:18 PM
by: voidUpdate
"Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, pay for an S3 bucket instead"
4/7/2026, 12:41:04 PM
by: flanked-evergl
Stop paying for clothes, make your own instead!
4/7/2026, 12:34:19 PM
by: Saphyel
S3 is costly and carries significant political baggage.<p>For a better alternative, run MinIO on a cloud provider of your choice, or stick with a secure option like Proton Drive.
4/7/2026, 12:17:46 PM
by: BordairAPI
this is rlly cool
4/7/2026, 1:05:19 PM
by: Eikon
See also: <a href="https://github.com/Barre/ZeroFS" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/Barre/ZeroFS</a><p>Doesn’t require an external database (just a s3 bucket) and is a single binary. A webui is shipping in the next few days.
4/7/2026, 12:07:30 PM
by: zephyrwhimsy
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4/7/2026, 1:15:34 PM
by: zephyrwhimsy
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4/7/2026, 1:14:54 PM
by: randomtoast
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4/7/2026, 12:17:55 PM