head to head · open source
nnn vs burrow
nnn has 21,929 GitHub stars, 817 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. burrow has 1,429 stars, 176 forks, 58 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nnn leads on adoption by 1,435% (21,929 vs 1,429 stars). nnn is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; burrow is written in Swift under MIT. nnn has attracted 4% 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 1 topic tag (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
| nnn | burrow | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 817 | ⑂ 176 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick nnn if
- You weight community size — 22K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- 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 nnn
nnn (n³) is a tiny, nearly zero config terminal file manager written in C and released under the BSD 2 Clause licence, built for developers, sysadmins, and command line users who want fast filesystem browsing, disk usage analysis, batch renaming, and file picking without leaving the shell.
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 nnn or burrow more popular?
nnn has 21,929 GitHub stars and burrow has 1,429. nnn has the larger community by that measure.
Are nnn and burrow free?
Both are open source. nnn is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and burrow under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nnn and burrow?
nnn is written in C 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, nnn or burrow?
Choose nnn if you want the larger community (21,929 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose burrow if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.