head to head · open source
rclone vs Seafile
rclone has 60,740 GitHub stars, 5,640 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Seafile has 15,414 stars, 1,674 forks, 94 open issues and last shipped 19 days ago. rclone leads on adoption by 294% (60,740 vs 15,414 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; Seafile is written in C under a custom or non-standard licence. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Seafile 11%. rclone was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cloud-storage), 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 | Seafile | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 61K | ★ 15K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.6K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| 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 Seafile if
- You want the Seafile feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and Seafile 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 Seafile
Introduction Seafile is an open source cloud storage system with privacy protection and teamwork features. Collections of files are called libraries. Each library can be synced separately. A library can also be encrypted with a user chosen password. Seafile also allows users to create groups and easily sharing files into groups. Beyond sync and share, Seafile provides advanced metadata management features and handy collaboration features. Feature Summary Seafile has the following features: File syncing 1. Selective sync for any folder. 2. Correctly handles file conflicts based on history instead of timestamp. 3…
read the full Seafile overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or Seafile more popular?
rclone has 60,740 GitHub stars and Seafile has 15,414. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and Seafile free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT, and Seafile has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between rclone and Seafile?
rclone is written in Go and Seafile in C. 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 Seafile?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (60,740 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Seafile if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.