head to head · open source
syncthing vs xplr
syncthing has 90,205 GitHub stars, 5,581 forks, 388 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. xplr has 4,851 stars, 97 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. syncthing leads on adoption by 1,760% (90,205 vs 4,851 stars). syncthing is written in Go under MPL-2.0; xplr is written in Rust under MIT. syncthing has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, xplr 2%. syncthing 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
| syncthing | xplr | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 4.9K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.6K | ⑂ 97 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick syncthing if
- You weight community size — 90K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick xplr if
- You want the xplr feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and xplr fits your workflow better
About syncthing
[![Syncthing][14]][15] Goals Syncthing is a continuous file synchronization program . It synchronizes files between two or more computers. We strive to fulfill the goals below. The goals are listed in order of importance, the most important ones first. This is the summary version of the goal list for more commentary, see the full [Goals document][13]. Syncthing should be: 1. Safe From Data Loss Protecting the user's data is paramount. We take every reasonable precaution to avoid corrupting the user's files. 2. Secure Against Attackers Again, protecting the user's data is paramount. Regardless of our other goals…
read the full syncthing overview →
About xplr
▸[ xplr] A hackable, minimal, fast TUI file explorer [ Install ] [ Documentation ] [ Hacks ] [ Plugins ] [ Integrations ] xplr is a terminal UI based file explorer that aims to increase our terminal productivity by being a flexible, interactive orchestrator for the ever growing awesome command line utilities that work with the file system. To achieve its goal, xplr strives to be a fast, minimal and more importantly, hackable file explorer. xplr is not meant to be a replacement for the standard shell commands or the GUI file managers. Rather, it aims to [integrate them all][14] and expose an intuitive…
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Frequently asked questions
Is syncthing or xplr more popular?
syncthing has 90,205 GitHub stars and xplr has 4,851. syncthing has the larger community by that measure.
Are syncthing and xplr free?
Both are open source. syncthing is licensed under MPL-2.0 and xplr under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between syncthing and xplr?
syncthing is written in Go and xplr 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, syncthing or xplr?
Choose syncthing if you want the larger community (90,205 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose xplr if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.