head to head · open source
rclone vs safebucket
rclone has 60,108 GitHub stars, 5,475 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped yesterday. safebucket has 964 stars, 41 forks, 36 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. rclone leads on adoption by 6,135% (60,108 vs 964 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; safebucket is written in Go under Apache-2.0. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, safebucket 4%. rclone was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (golang), 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 | safebucket | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 964 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-04 | 2026-09-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 41 |
| 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 safebucket if
- You want the safebucket 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 safebucket 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 safebucket
Safebucket is an open source, self hosted file sharing platform written in Go for teams that want to keep file storage and access on their own infrastructure rather than with a cloud provider.
read the full safebucket overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or safebucket more popular?
rclone has 60,108 GitHub stars and safebucket has 964. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and safebucket free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and safebucket under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and safebucket?
rclone is written in Go and safebucket 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 safebucket?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (60,108 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose safebucket if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.