head to head · open source
rclone vs Firefiles
rclone has 60,800 GitHub stars, 5,650 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Firefiles has 370 stars, 59 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 1.0 years ago. rclone leads on adoption by 16,332% (60,800 vs 370 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; Firefiles is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Firefiles 16%. rclone was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cloud-storage), 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 | Firefiles | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 61K | ★ 370 |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2025-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 59 |
| 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 Firefiles if
- You want the Firefiles feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Firefiles 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 Firefiles
Firefiles Join Discord: Description Firefiles is an open‑source alternative to Dropbox which lets you setup a cloud drive with the backend of your choice and lets you seamlessly manage your files across multiple providers. Features A modern file system interface for your storage buckets. Manage files in the browser. Easily download and share files. File previews. File tagging and filtering (if provider supports). AWS S3 support. Dark theme. Screenshots Tech Used Sponsor this project Firefiles is an open source project. If you want to support the project, you can do so by funding / sponsoring the project. Here…
read the full Firefiles overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or Firefiles more popular?
rclone has 60,800 GitHub stars and Firefiles has 370. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and Firefiles free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and Firefiles under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and Firefiles?
rclone is written in Go and Firefiles 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 Firefiles?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (60,800 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Firefiles if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.