head to head · open source
dua-cli vs burrow
dua-cli has 6,278 GitHub stars, 169 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. burrow has 1,429 stars, 176 forks, 58 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dua-cli leads on adoption by 339% (6,278 vs 1,429 stars). dua-cli is written in Rust under MIT; burrow is written in Swift under MIT. dua-cli has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, burrow 12%. burrow was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cleaner, disk-usage), 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
| dua-cli | burrow | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.3K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-09-12 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 169 | ⑂ 176 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick dua-cli if
- You weight community size — 6.3K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick burrow if
- You want the burrow feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and burrow fits your workflow better
About dua-cli
dua cli is a terminal based, parallel disk usage analyzer written in Rust that reports how much space a directory consumes and optionally deletes unwanted data, built for developers, system administrators, and anyone cleaning up storage from a shell rather than a graphical desktop application.
read the full dua-cli overview →
About burrow
Burrow is a free, open source (MIT), native macOS app that combines junk cleanup, app management, maintenance, disk analysis, and live system status in one window, with a built in MCP server so AI agents such as Claude Code, Codex, and Cursor can query and care for the same machine.
read the full burrow overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is dua-cli or burrow more popular?
dua-cli has 6,278 GitHub stars and burrow has 1,429. dua-cli has the larger community by that measure.
Are dua-cli and burrow free?
Both are open source. dua-cli is licensed under MIT and burrow under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between dua-cli and burrow?
dua-cli is written in Rust and burrow in Swift. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, dua-cli or burrow?
Choose dua-cli if you want the larger community (6,278 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose burrow if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.