Ubicloud: An Open Source Alternative to AWS
Cloud infrastructure is expensive, and vendor lock-in is real. What if you could get AWS-like services—compute, storage, managed Postgres, even AI inference—without the proprietary walls? That’s where Ubicloud comes in.
With over 5.4k GitHub stars and growing, Ubicloud is positioning itself as a fully open source (AGPL-3.0) alternative to AWS. No black boxes, no surprise bills—just infrastructure you can run yourself or through their managed offering.
What It Does
Ubicloud delivers core cloud services with a focus on developer needs:
- Elastic compute: Spin up VMs on demand.
- Block storage: Non-replicated (for now) but functional.
- Networking: Firewall and load balancer support.
- Managed Postgres: Because who wants to self-host a database?
- Kubernetes: Because of course.
- AI inference: A nod to the current hype cycle.
- IAM: Basic access control for your resources.
It’s not a full AWS replacement (yet), but it covers the essentials for many apps.
Why It’s Cool
- Truly open source: No proprietary hooks—just Ruby, Terraform, and PostgreSQL under the hood.
- Self-hostable: Run it on your own hardware or a cloud provider.
- Avoid lock-in: If you’re tired of AWS/GCP/Azure’s pricing games, this is a breath of fresh air.
- Active development: The project is evolving fast, with frequent commits and a clear roadmap.
How to Try It
- Self-host: Clone the repo and follow the setup (Ruby/Postgres/Terraform required).
- Managed option: Check out ubicloud.com for their hosted service.
- Demo: The repo includes example deployments—good for a quick test drive.
Final Thoughts
Ubicloud isn’t perfect (non-replicated storage is a notable gap), but it’s one of the most promising open source cloud projects out there. If you’re building something where cost or control matters, it’s worth a look.
Would I run my entire startup on it today? Maybe not. But for side projects, internal tools, or just learning? Absolutely.
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