head to head · open source
rclone vs dufs
rclone has 59,830 GitHub stars, 5,407 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dufs has 10,756 stars, 589 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. rclone leads on adoption by 456% (59,830 vs 10,756 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; dufs is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, dufs 5%. rclone 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
| rclone | dufs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-06-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 589 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rclone if
- You weight community size — 60K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dufs if
- You want the dufs 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 dufs fits your workflow better
About rclone
Rclone is an MIT licensed, Go based command line program that syncs files and directories to and from cloud storage providers, built for anyone who needs one tool for many backends instead of a separate client for every service.
read the full rclone overview →
About dufs
Dufs is a Rust command line file server, released under the Apache 2.0 licence and distributed as dufs , that serves static files, accepts uploads, supports search and access control, and speaks WebDAV from a single binary.
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or dufs more popular?
rclone has 59,830 GitHub stars and dufs has 10,756. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and dufs free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and dufs under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and dufs?
rclone is written in Go and dufs 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, rclone or dufs?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (59,830 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dufs if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.