head to head · open source
Pearcleaner vs gdu
Pearcleaner has 15,029 GitHub stars, 401 forks, 84 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. gdu has 6,173 stars, 251 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Pearcleaner leads on adoption by 143% (15,029 vs 6,173 stars). Pearcleaner is written in Swift under a custom or non-standard licence; gdu is written in Go under MIT. Pearcleaner has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, gdu 4%. gdu was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Pearcleaner | gdu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 6.2K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Swift | Go |
| Last push | 2026-06-22 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 401 | ⑂ 251 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Pearcleaner if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- 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 Pearcleaner
Pearcleaner Website The only legitimate website owned by me is Anything else offering Pearcleaner downloads is either a scam or not affiliated with me. More details HERE. Project Status: On Hold As you may have noticed, development on the app has basically stopped since end of 2025, so I wanted to provide some context. Between a new job, joining a friend who is building a SaaS company, and other life priorities, I no longer have the time needed to actively maintain or continue development on the project. Another major reason is that I previously relied on my work MacBook for development. After changing jobs, I…
read the full Pearcleaner overview →
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 Pearcleaner or gdu more popular?
Pearcleaner has 15,029 GitHub stars and gdu has 6,173. Pearcleaner has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pearcleaner and gdu free?
Both are open source. Pearcleaner has no licence declared in this registry, and gdu is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Pearcleaner and gdu?
Pearcleaner is written in Swift 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, Pearcleaner or gdu?
Choose Pearcleaner if you want the larger community (15,029 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose gdu if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.