head to head · open source
rclone vs alto
rclone has 60,740 GitHub stars, 5,640 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped yesterday. alto has 1,616 stars, 60 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. rclone leads on adoption by 3,659% (60,740 vs 1,616 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; alto is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, alto 4%. rclone was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cloud-storage, dropbox), 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
| rclone | alto | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 61K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.6K | ⑂ 60 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rclone if
- You weight community size — 61K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick alto if
- You want the alto feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and alto fits your workflow better
About rclone
Website Documentation Download Contributing Changelog Installation Forum Rclone Rclone ("rsync for cloud storage") is a command line program to sync files and directories to and from different cloud storage providers. Storage providers 1Fichier :page facing up: Akamai Netstorage :page facing up: Alibaba Cloud (Aliyun) Object Storage System (OSS) :page facing up: Amazon S3 :page facing up: ArvanCloud Object Storage (AOS) :page facing up: Bizfly Cloud Simple Storage :page facing up: Backblaze B2 :page facing up: Box :page facing up: Ceph :page facing up: China Mobile Ecloud Elastic Object Storage (EOS) :page…
read the full rclone overview →
About alto
Alto Alto keeps folders on your computer in sync with your cloud storage, such as Google Drive, Dropbox, Proton Drive and more. It's built to look and feel native on your desktop, with current support for Linux (GNOME specifically, with apps for macOS, Windows, and Android in the works). [!NOTE] Looking for the old Celeste code? It's on the celeste rs branch. Features True two way sync. New files, edits and deletions go both ways. All your clouds in one place. Connect as many accounts as you like, across different providers, and sync folders from all of them at once. Safe across several computers. Before…
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or alto more popular?
rclone has 60,740 GitHub stars and alto has 1,616. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and alto free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and alto under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and alto?
rclone is written in Go and alto in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, rclone or alto?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (60,740 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose alto if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.