head to head · open source
Spacedrive vs filegator
Spacedrive has 39,062 GitHub stars, 1,355 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. filegator has 3,079 stars, 452 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Spacedrive leads on adoption by 1,169% (39,062 vs 3,079 stars). Spacedrive is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; filegator is written in PHP under MIT. Spacedrive has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, filegator 15%. filegator was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (file-manager, 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
| Spacedrive | filegator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-07-29 | 2026-09-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 452 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Spacedrive if
- You weight community size — 39K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick filegator if
- You want the filegator feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and filegator fits your workflow better
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 →
About filegator
FileGator is a free, open source, self hosted PHP web application that gives teams, schools, and administrators a browser based multi user file manager with fine grained permissions and pluggable storage backends.
read the full filegator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Spacedrive or filegator more popular?
Spacedrive has 39,062 GitHub stars and filegator has 3,079. Spacedrive has the larger community by that measure.
Are Spacedrive and filegator free?
Both are open source. Spacedrive has no licence declared in this registry, and filegator is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Spacedrive and filegator?
Spacedrive is written in Rust and filegator in PHP. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Spacedrive or filegator?
Choose Spacedrive if you want the larger community (39,062 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose filegator if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.