head to head · open source
yazi vs ranger
yazi has 43,212 GitHub stars, 1,058 forks, 65 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. ranger has 17,448 stars, 940 forks, 896 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. yazi leads on adoption by 148% (43,212 vs 17,448 stars). yazi is written in Rust under MIT; ranger is written in Python under GPL-3.0. yazi has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, ranger 5%. yazi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (file-manager), 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
| yazi | ranger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 17K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 940 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick yazi if
- You weight community size — 43K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ranger if
- You want the ranger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and ranger fits your workflow better
About yazi
Special thanks to: Yazi ⚡️ Blazing Fast Terminal File Manager Yazi (means "duck") is a terminal file manager written in Rust, based on non blocking async I/O. It aims to provide an efficient, user friendly, and customizable file management experience. 💡 A new article explaining its internal workings: Why is Yazi Fast? 🚀 Full Asynchronous Support : All I/O operations are asynchronous, CPU tasks are spread across multiple threads, making the most of available resources. 💪 Powerful Async Task Scheduling and Management : Provides real time progress updates, task cancellation, and internal task priority…
About ranger
Ranger 1.9.4 ============ Ranger is a console file manager with VI key bindings. It provides a minimalistic and nice curses interface with a view on the directory hierarchy. It ships with rifle , a file launcher that is good at automatically finding out which program to use for what file type. For mc aficionados there's also the multi pane viewmode. This file describes ranger and how to get it to run. For instructions on the usage, please read the man page ( man ranger in a terminal). See HACKING.md for development specific information. For configuration, check the files in ranger/config/ or copy the default…
read the full ranger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is yazi or ranger more popular?
yazi has 43,212 GitHub stars and ranger has 17,448. yazi has the larger community by that measure.
Are yazi and ranger free?
Both are open source. yazi is licensed under MIT and ranger under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between yazi and ranger?
yazi is written in Rust and ranger in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, yazi or ranger?
Choose yazi if you want the larger community (43,212 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ranger if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.