head to head · open source
cloudreve vs ranger
cloudreve has 28,926 GitHub stars, 3,935 forks, 147 open issues and last shipped 16 days ago. ranger has 17,448 stars, 940 forks, 896 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. cloudreve leads on adoption by 66% (28,926 vs 17,448 stars). cloudreve is written in Go under GPL-3.0; ranger is written in Python under GPL-3.0. cloudreve has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, ranger 5%. cloudreve was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (file-manager), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| cloudreve | ranger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 17K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-20 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.9K | ⑂ 940 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cloudreve if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ranger if
- You want the ranger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and ranger fits your workflow better
About cloudreve
中文版本 Cloudreve Self hosted file management system with multi cloud support. Homepage • Try it • Discussion • Documents • Download • Telegram • Discord :sparkles: Features :cloud: Support storing files into Local, Remote node, OneDrive, S3 compatible API, Qiniu Kodo, Aliyun OSS, Tencent COS, Huawei Cloud OBS, Kingsoft Cloud KS3, Upyun. :outbox tray: Upload/Download in directly transmission from client to storage providers. 💾 Integrate with Aria2/qBittorrent to download files in background, use multiple download nodes to share the load. 📚 Compress/Extract/Preview archived files, download files in batch. 💻…
read the full cloudreve overview →
About ranger
Ranger 1.9.4 ============ Ranger is a console file manager with VI key bindings. It provides a minimalistic and nice curses interface with a view on the directory hierarchy. It ships with rifle , a file launcher that is good at automatically finding out which program to use for what file type. For mc aficionados there's also the multi pane viewmode. This file describes ranger and how to get it to run. For instructions on the usage, please read the man page ( man ranger in a terminal). See HACKING.md for development specific information. For configuration, check the files in ranger/config/ or copy the default…
read the full ranger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cloudreve or ranger more popular?
cloudreve has 28,926 GitHub stars and ranger has 17,448. cloudreve has the larger community by that measure.
Are cloudreve and ranger free?
Both are open source. cloudreve is licensed under GPL-3.0 and ranger under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cloudreve and ranger?
cloudreve is written in Go and ranger in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cloudreve or ranger?
Choose cloudreve if you want the larger community (28,926 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ranger if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.