head to head · open source
rclone vs joshuto
rclone has 59,961 GitHub stars, 5,440 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped yesterday. joshuto has 3,732 stars, 165 forks, 102 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. rclone leads on adoption by 1,507% (59,961 vs 3,732 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; joshuto is written in Rust under LGPL-3.0. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, joshuto 4%. 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 | joshuto | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 3.7K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-26 | 2026-09-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 165 |
| 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 joshuto if
- You want the joshuto feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and joshuto 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 joshuto
Joshuto is a ranger like terminal file manager written in Rust, intended for keyboard driven users on Linux and macOS who want a fast, configurable text interface file browser rather than a graphical one.
read the full joshuto overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or joshuto more popular?
rclone has 59,961 GitHub stars and joshuto has 3,732. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and joshuto free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and joshuto under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and joshuto?
rclone is written in Go and joshuto 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 joshuto?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (59,961 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose joshuto if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.