head to head · open source
rclone vs Spacedrive
rclone has 59,830 GitHub stars, 5,407 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Spacedrive has 39,006 stars, 1,352 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. rclone leads on adoption by 53% (59,830 vs 39,006 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; Spacedrive is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Spacedrive 3%. rclone was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (encryption), 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 | Spacedrive | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 39K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-07-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 Spacedrive if
- You want the Spacedrive feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Spacedrive 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 Spacedrive
Spacedrive is an open source, cross platform file explorer built on a virtual distributed filesystem written in Rust. It unifies local and remote storage—including cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and S3—into a single interface, enabling unified search, browsing, and syncing across devices without centralized servers.
read the full Spacedrive overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or Spacedrive more popular?
rclone has 59,830 GitHub stars and Spacedrive has 39,006. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and Spacedrive free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT, and Spacedrive has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between rclone and Spacedrive?
rclone is written in Go and Spacedrive in Rust. 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 Spacedrive?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (59,830 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Spacedrive if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.