Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#11

Post by 1a527dd5 » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 12:16 PM UTC

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.

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#12

Post by Saphyel » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 12:17 PM UTC

S3 is costly and carries significant political baggage.

For a better alternative, run MinIO on a cloud provider of your choice, or stick with a secure option like Proton Drive.

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#13

Post by randomtoast » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 12:17 PM UTC

The repository only exist for seven days and was likely written by Claude code, which makes it not very trustworthy for storing personal data.

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#14

Post by filleokus » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 12:19 PM UTC

Neat! Pricing wise it might not always make sense though to use the commercial blob storages, especially for solo usage.

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.

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.

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#15

Post by HardwareLust » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 12:19 PM UTC

Just don't spin up your machines in Bahrain or the UAE...

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#16

Post by ledauphin » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 12:20 PM UTC

Eikon wrote: post #4

See also: https://github.com/Barre/ZeroFS Doesn’t require an external database (just a s3 bucket) and is a single binary. A webui is shipping in the next few days.

this doesn't seem like it allows multiple writers?

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#17

Post by atrus » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 12:21 PM UTC

dwedge wrote: post #10

pluc wrote: post #2

I'd love a local offline alternative, maybe I'll get AI to build it for me

Not trying to be snarky but what is offline dropbox more than a directory?

Syncthing? I'm taking 'offline' to mean 'not requiring the internet', which means you can have plenty of computers!

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#18

Post by kristianc » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 12:24 PM UTC

We've officially come full circle

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#19

Post by npodbielski » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 12:24 PM UTC

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.

Re: Show HN: Stop paying for Dropbox/Google Drive, use your own S3 bucket instead

#20

Post by jrochkind1 » Tue, Apr 07, 2026, 12:26 PM UTC

I wonder if it would be possible to do something like this that had transparent end-to-end encryption.