head to head · open source
nnn vs parallel-disk-usage
nnn has 21,989 GitHub stars, 820 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped yesterday. parallel-disk-usage has 731 stars, 25 forks, 21 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. nnn leads on adoption by 2,908% (21,989 vs 731 stars). nnn is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; parallel-disk-usage is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. nnn has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, parallel-disk-usage 3%. nnn was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (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 | parallel-disk-usage | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 22K | ★ 731 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-21 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 820 | ⑂ 25 |
| 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 parallel-disk-usage if
- You want the parallel-disk-usage feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and parallel-disk-usage 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 parallel-disk-usage
parallel disk usage (pdu) is a highly parallelized directory tree analyzer written in Rust that renders a graphical chart of file and directory sizes directly in the terminal, and it is aimed at developers and system administrators who need to find out where disk space has gone without leaving the command line.
read the full parallel-disk-usage overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nnn or parallel-disk-usage more popular?
nnn has 21,989 GitHub stars and parallel-disk-usage has 731. nnn has the larger community by that measure.
Are nnn and parallel-disk-usage free?
Both are open source. nnn is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and parallel-disk-usage under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nnn and parallel-disk-usage?
nnn is written in C and parallel-disk-usage in Rust. 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 parallel-disk-usage?
Choose nnn if you want the larger community (21,989 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose parallel-disk-usage if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.