01 —version control for heavy work
Keep every version
of the heavy stuff.
Terabyte scenes, locked assets, instant previews — versioned with the precision of a contact sheet. Built for projects too big for Git, engineered for the heaviest work. No egress fees, ever.
0 €
egress
TB
scale
∞
history
<1s
checkout
- branch
- main ↑3
- revision
- #a1f9c0
- size
- 4.2 GB
- files
- fbx · exr · wav
- lock
- Maya K. — exclusive
built for the files your tools make
02 —why another VCS
Git was built for text.
Your work isn't.
Games, 3D, film and ML live in huge binary files that Git fumbles, LFS taxes, and Perforce overcharges for. Pako is built for exactly that.
Git can't hold the heavy stuff
A 2 GB level or a 4K plate is an opaque blob Git can't diff or merge. Git LFS bolts storage on with pointers, quotas and a bandwidth meter — a workaround you pay for forever.
Two artists, one file, one loser
Binary assets don't three-way merge. Without locks, whoever saves last wins and someone's afternoon is gone — so teams whisper 'don't touch the boss level' in chat instead.
Perforce works, but it bills
Helix Core nails locking and scale, then charges per seat, demands a server, and feels alien to the artists doing most of the committing. Half the team quietly opts out.
03 —capabilities
Everything heavy work needs. Nothing it doesn't.
Native big files
Terabyte-scale repositories with content-addressed chunks. You fetch a revision, not the whole history — sub-second checkouts on multi-gigabyte trees.
Exclusive file locking
Reserve an asset before you open it. Everyone sees who holds the lock — the Perforce workflow artists expect, without the Perforce server.
Preview-first review
Assets and frames render in the browser, so you can scrub revisions and approve the exact one — not a screenshot of it pasted into chat.
Branches & revisions
Git-grade history for the parts that merge, immutable revision hashes for the parts that don't. One coherent project, one timeline.
Zero egress, always
Pull a 40 GB project for the tenth time today and it still costs nothing. Bandwidth is free on every tier — the git-LFS and Perforce nightmare, gone.
Purpose-built engine
A version-control engine designed for code plus terabyte-scale binaries — content-addressed, lock-aware, and independent. Not a Git fork with LFS bolted on.
04 —how it works
From empty repo to first preview in minutes.
Create a repository
Public or private, provisioned the moment you create it — versioned, lock-aware, zero egress.
Clone with the CLI
Pull only what the revision needs. Terabyte trees check out in under a second.
Lock, commit, preview
Reserve an asset, push a revision, and review it in the browser. The source of truth, exactly where you left it.
05 —honest comparisons
Pako, next to the usual suspects.
Perforce
Perforce alternative for game and content teams: the same exclusive locking and big-file scale, without per-seat pricing, server ops, or egress fees.
Read the breakdown vsGit LFS
Git LFS alternative without pointers, smudge filters, storage quotas or egress charges — native big-file version control with real file locking.
Read the breakdown vsGitHub
An artist-first companion to GitHub: native big-file and binary versioning with locks, previews and zero egress.
Read the breakdown06 —who it's for
A beachhead in games. A home for anything heavy.
It started with Unreal — our beachhead — and works for any team that has outgrown Git plus Git LFS.
07 —under the hood
Engineered for terabytes.
Most platforms treat huge binaries as an exception. Pako treats them as the default — content-addressed storage, exclusive locking, and checkouts that pull only what a revision needs. Independent, hosted, and built for the files your tools actually make.
Content-addressed
Identical data stored once across revisions and branches.
Exclusive locking
Reserve a binary before you open it — no silent clobbering.
Zero egress
Pull to every machine and render farm, bandwidth always free.
Purpose-built engine
Not Git with LFS bolted on — native big-file version control.
08 —pricing
Pay for seats and storage. Never for bandwidth.
Free
for makers0 €
Generous storage, unlimited public repos, small teams. Egress included.
Compare plansTeam
most popularSeat + storage
Private repos, more storage, locking and roles for a growing studio.
Compare plansStudio
for scaleCustom
SSO, audit, locking policy, priority support and volume storage.
Compare plans09 —get the cli
One line, then pako clone.
Install the Pako CLI and pull a multi-gigabyte repo in seconds — then stage, commit, push. It keeps itself up to date.
curl -fsSL https://dl.pako.gg/install.sh | shirm https://dl.pako.gg/install.ps1 | iexWindows & Linux · self-updating · pako update
10 —questions
The honest FAQ.
Is Pako a replacement for GitHub?
No — it's a companion. We don't try to win the code-hosting war; GitHub is great for that. Pako leads where Git is genuinely weak: huge binary assets, file locking, and the artists who own them.
How is this different from Git LFS?
Git LFS is a patch over Git's inability to hold large files: pointers, smudge filters, separate quotas and metered bandwidth. Pako treats large files as the default, adds real exclusive locking and in-browser previews, and never charges for egress.
Does Pako support file locking?
Yes. Exclusive locks are first-class: reserve an asset before editing, and everyone sees who holds it. It's the Perforce-style workflow for binary files, without running a Perforce server.
What does it cost?
There's a generous free tier with storage, unlimited public repositories and bandwidth included. Paid plans are billed per seat plus storage — and bandwidth is always free, because our blob storage costs nothing to serve.
Where is my data stored?
On content-addressed object storage with zero egress. Blobs are deduplicated across revisions; metadata lives on a portable database layer we can move without re-architecting.
Is it built on Git?
No. Pako runs on a purpose-built version-control engine designed for code plus large binary assets — content-addressed, lock-aware and terabyte-scale. On top of it we add accounts, orgs, access control, previews and billing.
Make something heavy.
Start free in minutes. Bring the levels, the bakes, the datasets — Pako keeps every version.