MinIO is a high-performance, S3-compatible object storage solution released under the GNU AGPL v3.0 license. Designed for speed and scalability, it powers AI/ML, analytics, and data-intensive workloads with industry-leading performance.

• S3 API Compatible – Seamless integration with existing S3 tools
• Built for AI & Analytics – Optimized for large-scale data pipelines
• High Performance – Ideal for demanding storage workloads.

This README provides instructions for building MinIO from source and deploying onto baremetal hardware. Use the MinIO Documentation project to build and host a local copy of the documentation.

We designed MinIO as Open Source software for the Open Source software community. We encourage the community to remix, redesign, and reshare MinIO under the terms of the AGPLv3 license.

All usage of MinIO in your application stack requires validation against AGPLv3 obligations, which include but are not limited to the release of modified code to the community from which you have benefited. Any commercial/proprietary usage of the AGPLv3 software, including repackaging or reselling services/features, is done at your own risk.

The AGPLv3 provides no obligation by any party to support, maintain, or warranty the original or any modified work. All support is provided on a best-effort basis through Github and our Slack channel, and any member of the community is welcome to contribute and assist others in their usage of the software.

MinIO AIStor includes enterprise-grade support and licensing for workloads which require commercial or proprietary usage and production-level SLA/SLO-backed support. For more information, reach out for a quote.

Important: The MinIO community edition is now distributed as source code only. We will no longer provide pre-compiled binary releases for the community version.

To use MinIO community edition, you have two options:

1. Install from source using go install github.com/minio/minio@latest (recommended)
2. Build a Docker image from the provided Dockerfile

See the sections below for detailed instructions on each method.

Historical pre-compiled binary releases remain available for reference but are no longer maintained:

• GitHub Releases: https://github.com/minio/minio/releases
• Direct downloads: https://dl.min.io/server/minio/release/

These legacy binaries will not receive updates. We strongly recommend using source builds for access to the latest features, bug fixes, and security updates.

Use the following commands to compile and run a standalone MinIO server from source. If you do not have a working Golang environment, please follow How to install Golang. Minimum version required is go1.24

go install github.com/minio/minio@latest

You can alternatively run go build and use the GOOS and GOARCH environment variables to control the OS and architecture target. For example:

env GOOS=linux GOARCH=arm64 go build

Start MinIO by running minio server PATH where PATH is any empty folder on your local filesystem.

The MinIO deployment starts using default root credentials minioadmin:minioadmin. You can test the deployment using the MinIO Console, an embedded web-based object browser built into MinIO Server. Point a web browser running on the host machine to http://127.0.0.1:9000 and log in with the root credentials. You can use the Browser to create buckets, upload objects, and browse the contents of the MinIO server.

You can also connect using any S3-compatible tool, such as the MinIO Client mc commandline tool:

mc alias set local http://localhost:9000 minioadmin minioadmin
mc admin info local

See Test using MinIO Client mc for more information on using the mc commandline tool. For application developers, see https://docs.min.io/enterprise/aistor-object-store/developers/sdk/ to view MinIO SDKs for supported languages.

You can use the docker build . command to build a Docker image on your local host machine. You must first build MinIO and ensure the minio binary exists in the project root.

The following command builds the Docker image using the default Dockerfile in the root project directory with the repository and image tag myminio:minio

docker build -t myminio:minio .

Use docker image ls to confirm the image exists in your local repository. You can run the server using standard Docker invocation:

docker run -p 9000:9000 -p 9001:9001 myminio:minio server /tmp/minio --console-address :9001

Complete documentation for building Docker containers, managing custom images, or loading images into orchestration platforms is out of scope for this documentation. You can modify the Dockerfile and dockerscripts/docker-entrypoint.sh as-needed to reflect your specific image requirements.

See the MinIO Container documentation for more guidance on running MinIO within a Container image.

There are two paths for installing MinIO onto Kubernetes infrastructure:

• Use the MinIO Operator
• Use the community-maintained Helm charts

See the MinIO Documentation for guidance on deploying using the Operator. The Community Helm chart has instructions in the folder-level README.

MinIO Server comes with an embedded web based object browser. Point your web browser to http://127.0.0.1:9000 to ensure your server has started successfully.

mc provides a modern alternative to UNIX commands like ls, cat, cp, mirror, diff etc. It supports filesystems and Amazon S3 compatible cloud storage services.

The following commands set a local alias, validate the server information, create a bucket, copy data to that bucket, and list the contents of the bucket.

mc alias set local http://localhost:9000 minioadmin minioadmin
mc admin info
mc mb data
mc cp ~/Downloads/mydata data/
mc ls data/

Follow the MinIO Client Quickstart Guide for further instructions.

• The MinIO documentation website
• MinIO Erasure Code Overview
• Use mc with MinIO Server
• Use minio-go SDK with MinIO Server

Please follow MinIO Contributor's Guide for guidance on making new contributions to the repository.

• MinIO source is licensed under the GNU AGPLv3.
• MinIO documentation is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
• License Compliance