Filestash

What is Filestash?

Filestash is an open source web file manager that puts a single browser interface over storage you already run. Instead of holding your files, it connects to a backend — S3, SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, SMB, NFS, Git, Google Drive, Dropbox, and 20+ others — and gives your team a clean, Dropbox-like way to browse, preview, upload, and share what’s there.

What is Filestash best for?

Teams that already have files sitting on object storage, an SFTP server, or a NAS and want a friendly web front-end without migrating the data anywhere. It’s a strong fit for giving non-technical users access to an S3 bucket or SFTP share, and for consolidating many storage systems behind one login.

What can Filestash do?

• Connect to 20+ storage backends — S3, MinIO, Backblaze, Azure Blob, SFTP, FTP/FTPS, WebDAV, SMB, NFS, Git, LDAP, and more
• Preview and edit files in the browser: images, video, PDFs, code, plus format-specific viewers (GIS, astronomy, 3D, and others)
• Share files and folders by link with granular access control
• Expose the same storage back out through gateways (SFTP, S3, WebDAV, FTP)
• Automate actions on file events with a built-in workflow engine
• Extend almost everything through its plugin architecture (Go or WebAssembly)
• Add OCR and semantic search on paid tiers

Where does Filestash fall short?

• The free AGPL-3.0 edition is capped at 3 users — beyond that you need a paid commercial license, so it’s not a free option for larger teams.
• SSO (SAML, OIDC, LDAP), RBAC, audit logging, and white-labeling are paid-tier features, not part of the open source build.
• It’s a file manager, not storage or sync — there’s no built-in cloud to hold your data or a first-class desktop sync client like Dropbox’s, so you bring your own backend.

Is Filestash free?

Partly. Self-hosting the AGPL-3.0 community edition is free but limited to 3 users. Commercial use and larger teams need a paid plan: the self-served Professional tier starts at $50/month (adds SSO and RBAC), and Enterprise starts at $290/month (unlimited users, audit and compliance, white-labeling, high availability, and support).

What does Filestash replace?

Filestash is a self-hosted alternative to Dropbox, Box, and SharePoint for the “give people a web UI to files” job. The difference: it doesn’t store the files itself — it fronts storage you control, so you keep your data on your own S3, SFTP, or NAS. If you want a system that also stores and syncs files, Nextcloud or Seafile is a closer match.

FAQ

Is Filestash open source? Yes — the core is licensed under AGPL-3.0. The free self-hosted edition is capped at 3 users, and features like SSO and audit logging are reserved for paid commercial tiers.

Can I self-host Filestash for free? Yes, for up to 3 users. It’s a single Go binary or Docker container. Past 3 users, or for commercial deployments needing SSO/RBAC, you need a paid license.

Is Filestash a good Dropbox alternative? As a file-access UI, yes — it gives you a Dropbox-like browser over storage you already own. But it isn’t a storage-and-sync product itself, so you supply the backend (S3, SFTP, WebDAV, etc.).

What do I need to run Filestash? A server with Docker (or the Go binary) and at least one storage backend to connect to — an S3 bucket, SFTP server, WebDAV share, or NAS.