head to head · open source
rclone vs filegator
rclone has 60,031 GitHub stars, 5,462 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped yesterday. filegator has 3,079 stars, 452 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. rclone leads on adoption by 1,850% (60,031 vs 3,079 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; filegator is written in PHP under MIT. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, filegator 15%. 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 | filegator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 452 |
| 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 filegator if
- You want the filegator feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and filegator 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 filegator
FileGator is a free, open source, self hosted PHP web application that gives teams, schools, and administrators a browser based multi user file manager with fine grained permissions and pluggable storage backends.
read the full filegator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or filegator more popular?
rclone has 60,031 GitHub stars and filegator has 3,079. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and filegator free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and filegator under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and filegator?
rclone is written in Go and filegator in PHP. 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 filegator?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (60,031 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose filegator if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.