head to head · open source
rclone vs dropbox-sdk-python
rclone has 60,948 GitHub stars, 5,676 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dropbox-sdk-python has 986 stars, 337 forks, 21 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. rclone leads on adoption by 6,081% (60,948 vs 986 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; dropbox-sdk-python is written in Python under MIT. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, dropbox-sdk-python 34%. rclone was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | dropbox-sdk-python | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 61K | ★ 986 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-11 | 2026-11-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 337 |
| 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 dropbox-sdk-python if
- You want the dropbox-sdk-python feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and dropbox-sdk-python 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…
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About dropbox-sdk-python
Important: Use v12.0.2 or newer of this SDK for compatibility with the Dropbox API servers. Older versions stopped working in January 2026. Please refer to this blog post for more information: .. image:: :target: .. image:: :target: .. image:: :target: .. image:: :target: The official Dropbox SDK for Python. Documentation can be found on Read The Docs . Requirements ============ This SDK requires Python 3.11 or newer . Earlier versions of Python, including Python 2.7 and Python 3.4 through 3.10, are not supported, as they have reached end of life and are no longer maintained upstream. Installation ============…
read the full dropbox-sdk-python overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or dropbox-sdk-python more popular?
rclone has 60,948 GitHub stars and dropbox-sdk-python has 986. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and dropbox-sdk-python free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and dropbox-sdk-python under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and dropbox-sdk-python?
rclone is written in Go and dropbox-sdk-python 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, rclone or dropbox-sdk-python?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (60,948 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dropbox-sdk-python if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.