head to head · open source
rclone vs cyberduck
rclone has 59,844 GitHub stars, 5,413 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cyberduck has 4,788 stars, 369 forks, 506 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rclone leads on adoption by 1,150% (59,844 vs 4,788 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; cyberduck is written in Java under GPL-3.0. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, cyberduck 8%. cyberduck was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (backblaze-b2, dropbox, ftp), 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
| rclone | cyberduck | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 4.8K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 369 |
| 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 cyberduck if
- You want the cyberduck feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and cyberduck 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 cyberduck
Cyberduck is a libre FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Microsoft Azure & OneDrive and OpenStack Swift file transfer client for macOS and Windows, released under the GNU General Public License version 3 and developed at the iterate ch/cyberduck repository.
read the full cyberduck overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or cyberduck more popular?
rclone has 59,844 GitHub stars and cyberduck has 4,788. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and cyberduck free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and cyberduck under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and cyberduck?
rclone is written in Go and cyberduck in Java. 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 cyberduck?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (59,844 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cyberduck if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.