head to head · open source
rclone vs syncthing-macos
rclone has 60,827 GitHub stars, 5,654 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. syncthing-macos has 4,005 stars, 206 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 16 days ago. rclone leads on adoption by 1,419% (60,827 vs 4,005 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; syncthing-macos is written in Objective-C under MIT. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, syncthing-macos 5%. 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 | syncthing-macos | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 61K | ★ 4.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Objective-C |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-10-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 206 |
| 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 syncthing-macos if
- You want the syncthing-macos feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Objective-C
- You evaluated both and syncthing-macos 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 syncthing-macos
Syncthing for macOS [!NOTE] Syncthing v2 is the supported version since 23 february 2026. It needs at least macOS 12. Syncthing v1 is deprecated and will not get any updates or bugfixes. For version compatibility see README.md macos version support. Introduction syncthing macos project is a frugal native) macOS Syncthing tray application bundle. It bundles its own Syncthing instance and wraps Syncthing background process, making it behave more like a native macOS application and less like a command line utility with a web browser interface. Features include: Open the Syncthing WebGUI from the tray in your system…
read the full syncthing-macos overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or syncthing-macos more popular?
rclone has 60,827 GitHub stars and syncthing-macos has 4,005. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and syncthing-macos free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and syncthing-macos under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and syncthing-macos?
rclone is written in Go and syncthing-macos in Objective-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 syncthing-macos?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (60,827 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose syncthing-macos if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.