head to head · open source
rclone vs rclone-ui
rclone has 59,866 GitHub stars, 5,418 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. rclone-ui has 2,269 stars, 91 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. rclone leads on adoption by 2,538% (59,866 vs 2,269 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; rclone-ui is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, rclone-ui 4%. rclone was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (backblaze-b2, dropbox, ftp, fuse-filesystem), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| rclone | rclone-ui | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 91 |
| 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 rclone-ui if
- You want the rclone-ui feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and rclone-ui 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 rclone-ui
rclone ui is a cross platform graphical interface for rclone and S3 storage, made for people who want to manage remotes, sync tasks, and remote rclone instances without working from the command line.
read the full rclone-ui overview →
More in Productivity & Utilities
Related comparisons
More File Management & Sync projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the File Management & Sync field.
Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or rclone-ui more popular?
rclone has 59,866 GitHub stars and rclone-ui has 2,269. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and rclone-ui free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and rclone-ui under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and rclone-ui?
rclone is written in Go and rclone-ui 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 rclone-ui?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (59,866 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rclone-ui if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.