head to head · open source
rclone vs ownCloud
rclone has 60,780 GitHub stars, 5,646 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. ownCloud has 2,176 stars, 286 forks, 628 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rclone leads on adoption by 2,693% (60,780 vs 2,176 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; ownCloud is written in Go under Apache-2.0. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, ownCloud 13%. ownCloud was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (go), 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 | ownCloud | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 61K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.6K | ⑂ 286 |
| 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 ownCloud if
- You want the ownCloud feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ownCloud 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…
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About ownCloud
ownCloud Infinite Scale ownCloud Infinite Scale Introduction Quickstart Overview Clients Web Office Applications Authentication Installation Important Readings Run ownCloud Infinite Scale Use the Official Documentation Use the ocis Repo as Source Documentation Admin Documentation Development Documentation Security Contributing End User License Agreement Copyright Introduction ownCloud Infinite Scale (oCIS) is the new file sync & share platform that will be the foundation of your data management platform. Make sure to download the latest released version today! Quickstart For details of the commands used see the…
read the full ownCloud overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or ownCloud more popular?
rclone has 60,780 GitHub stars and ownCloud has 2,176. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and ownCloud free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and ownCloud under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and ownCloud?
rclone is written in Go and ownCloud 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 ownCloud?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (60,780 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ownCloud if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.