head to head · open source
rclone vs explorerplusplus
rclone has 60,999 GitHub stars, 5,693 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped today. explorerplusplus has 3,344 stars, 437 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rclone leads on adoption by 1,724% (60,999 vs 3,344 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; explorerplusplus is written in C++ under GPL-3.0. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, explorerplusplus 13%. 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 | explorerplusplus | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 61K | ★ 3.3K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-14 | 2026-11-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 437 |
| 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 explorerplusplus if
- You want the explorerplusplus feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and explorerplusplus 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 explorerplusplus
Explorer++ Explorer++ is a lightweight and fast file manager for Windows. Features With the option to save to the registry or a configuration file, Explorer++ is completely portable Tabbed browsing for easy management of multiple folders Display window shows previews of files as they are selected Easy to remember keyboard shortcuts for quick navigation Customizable user interface Full drag and drop support with other applications, including Windows Explorer Advanced file operations such as merging and splitting supported Change file dates and attributes Save a directory listing Bookmark tabs Search for files…
read the full explorerplusplus overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or explorerplusplus more popular?
rclone has 60,999 GitHub stars and explorerplusplus has 3,344. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and explorerplusplus free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and explorerplusplus under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and explorerplusplus?
rclone is written in Go and explorerplusplus in C++. 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 explorerplusplus?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (60,999 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose explorerplusplus if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.