head to head · open source
rclone vs PairDrop
rclone has 60,740 GitHub stars, 5,640 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped yesterday. PairDrop has 11,740 stars, 720 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. rclone leads on adoption by 417% (60,740 vs 11,740 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; PairDrop is written in JavaScript under GPL-3.0. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, PairDrop 6%. 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 | PairDrop | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 61K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-04-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.6K | ⑂ 720 |
| 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 PairDrop if
- You want the PairDrop feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and PairDrop 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 PairDrop
Send it , with PairDrop Local file sharing in your web browser . Inspired by Apple's AirDrop. Fork of Snapdrop. Report a bug Request feature Features File sharing on your local network that works on all platforms. A multi platform AirDrop like solution that works. Send images, documents or text via peer to peer connection to devices on the same local network. Internet transfers Join temporary public rooms to transfer files easily over the Internet. Web app Works on all devices with a modern web browser. Send a file from your phone to your laptop? Share photos in original quality with friends using Android and…
read the full PairDrop overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or PairDrop more popular?
rclone has 60,740 GitHub stars and PairDrop has 11,740. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and PairDrop free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and PairDrop under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and PairDrop?
rclone is written in Go and PairDrop in JavaScript. 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 PairDrop?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (60,740 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose PairDrop if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.