head to head · open source
nnn vs gdu
nnn has 22,107 GitHub stars, 834 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. gdu has 6,173 stars, 251 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. nnn leads on adoption by 258% (22,107 vs 6,173 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 | ★ 6.2K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 834 | ⑂ 251 |
| 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 Supercharge your productivity! [ Features ] $ $ [ Quickstart ] $ $ [ Plugins ] $ $ [ Wiki ] nnn ( n³ ) is a full featured terminal file manager. It's tiny ( 150 KiB), nearly 0 config and incredibly fast. It is designed to be unobtrusive with smart workflows to match the trains of thought. nnn can analyze disk usage, batch rename, launch apps and pick files. The plugin repository has tons of plugins to extend the capabilities further e.g. live previews, (un)mount disks, find & list, file/dir diff, upload files. A patch framework hosts sizable user submitted patches which are subjective in nature. Independent…
About gdu
go DiskUsage() Pretty fast disk usage analyzer written in Go. Gdu is intended primarily for SSD disks where it can fully utilize parallel processing. However HDDs work as well, but the performance gain is not so huge. Installation Head for the releases page and download the binary for your system. Using curl: curl L tar xz chmod +x gdu linux amd64 mv gdu linux amd64 /usr/bin/gdu See the installation page for other ways how to install Gdu to your system. Or you can use Gdu directly via Docker: docker run rm init interactive tty privileged volume /:/mnt/root ghcr.io/dundee/gdu /mnt/root Usage Examples gdu analyze…
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Frequently asked questions
Is nnn or gdu more popular?
nnn has 22,107 GitHub stars and gdu has 6,173. 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 (22,107 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose gdu if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.