head to head · open source
nnn vs gdu
nnn has 21,895 GitHub stars, 817 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. gdu has 5,982 stars, 235 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. nnn leads on adoption by 266% (21,895 vs 5,982 stars). nnn is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; gdu is written in Go under MIT. nnn has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, gdu 4%. nnn was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (cli, disk-usage, 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.
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Side by side
| nnn | gdu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 817 | ⑂ 235 |
| 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 gdu if
- You want the gdu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gdu 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 gdu
gdu (go DiskUsage()) is a fast disk usage analyzer with a console interface written in Go, aimed at developers, system administrators and other terminal users who need to find out what is consuming space on a disk.
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Frequently asked questions
Is nnn or gdu more popular?
nnn has 21,895 GitHub stars and gdu has 5,982. nnn has the larger community by that measure.
Are nnn and gdu free?
Both are open source. nnn is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and gdu under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nnn and gdu?
nnn is written in C and gdu in Go. 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 gdu?
Choose nnn if you want the larger community (21,895 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose gdu if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.