head to head · open source
rclone vs lf
rclone has 60,808 GitHub stars, 5,651 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. lf has 9,588 stars, 392 forks, 85 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. rclone leads on adoption by 534% (60,808 vs 9,588 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; lf is written in Go under MIT. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, lf 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 | lf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 61K | ★ 9.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 392 |
| 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 lf if
- You want the lf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and lf 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 lf
LF Doc Wiki lf:matrix.org (with IRC bridge) lf (as in "list files") is a terminal file manager written in Go with a heavy inspiration from ranger file manager. See faq for more information and tutorial for a gentle introduction with screencasts. Features Cross platform (Linux, macOS, BSDs, Windows) Single binary without any runtime dependencies Fast startup and low memory footprint due to native code and static binaries Asynchronous IO operations to avoid UI locking Server/client architecture and remote commands to manage multiple instances Extendable and configurable with shell commands Customizable keybindings…
More in Productivity & Utilities
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or lf more popular?
rclone has 60,808 GitHub stars and lf has 9,588. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and lf free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and lf under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and lf?
rclone is written in Go and lf in Go. 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 lf?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (60,808 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose lf if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.