head to head · open source
rclone vs xplorer
rclone has 59,899 GitHub stars, 5,420 forks, 1,273 open issues and last shipped yesterday. xplorer has 5,674 stars, 379 forks, 49 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. rclone leads on adoption by 956% (59,899 vs 5,674 stars). rclone is written in Go under MIT; xplorer is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. rclone has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, xplorer 7%. 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 | xplorer | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 60K | ★ 5.7K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-22 | 2026-06-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 379 |
| 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 xplorer if
- You want the xplorer feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and xplorer 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 xplorer
Xplorer is a cross platform, AI integrated desktop file manager built as a Tauri 2 application with a Rust backend and a React frontend, aimed at developers, researchers, students, and power users who want more from their files than the manager their operating system ships with.
read the full xplorer overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rclone or xplorer more popular?
rclone has 59,899 GitHub stars and xplorer has 5,674. rclone has the larger community by that measure.
Are rclone and xplorer free?
Both are open source. rclone is licensed under MIT and xplorer under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rclone and xplorer?
rclone is written in Go and xplorer 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 xplorer?
Choose rclone if you want the larger community (59,899 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose xplorer if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.