head to head · open source
rclone vs cryfs
rclone has 59,844 GitHub stars, 5,413 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cryfs has 2,304 stars, 170 forks, 154 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rclone leads on adoption by 2,497% (59,844 vs 2,304 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; cryfs is written in Rust under LGPL-3.0. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, cryfs 7%. rclone was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (cloud-storage, dropbox, encryption, fuse-filesystem), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| rclone | cryfs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 170 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rclone if
- You weight community size — 60K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cryfs if
- You want the cryfs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and cryfs fits your workflow better
About rclone
Rclone is an MIT licensed, Go based command line program that syncs files and directories to and from cloud storage providers, built for anyone who needs one tool for many backends instead of a separate client for every service.
read the full rclone overview →
About cryfs
CryFS is a FUSE based cryptographic filesystem written in Rust that encrypts a vault directory so it can be stored safely in cloud services such as Dropbox, iCloud, or OneDrive, and it is intended for Linux users who want their file contents, file sizes, directory structure, and metadata hidden from the storage provider rather than encrypted one file at a time.
read the full cryfs overview →
More in Productivity & Utilities
Related comparisons
More File Management & Sync projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the File Management & Sync field.
Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or cryfs more popular?
rclone has 59,844 GitHub stars and cryfs has 2,304. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and cryfs free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and cryfs under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and cryfs?
rclone is written in Go and cryfs in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, rclone or cryfs?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (59,844 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cryfs if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.