head to head · open source
herdr vs tinyfilemanager
herdr has 40,874 GitHub stars, 3,128 forks, 337 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tinyfilemanager has 5,977 stars, 1,814 forks, 308 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. herdr leads on adoption by 584% (40,874 vs 5,977 stars). herdr is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; tinyfilemanager is written in PHP under GPL-3.0. herdr has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, tinyfilemanager 30%. herdr 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
| herdr | tinyfilemanager | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-26 | 2026-07-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick herdr if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick tinyfilemanager if
- You want the tinyfilemanager feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and tinyfilemanager fits your workflow better
About herdr
herdr is a terminal first runtime for coding agents — a single Rust binary that owns the terminals in which tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode and Grok run, aimed at developers who keep agents working across local and remote machines and want those sessions to survive a lost SSH connection or a closed client.
read the full herdr overview →
About tinyfilemanager
Tiny File Manager is a single file, zero configuration PHP web application that gives you a browser based file manager, uploader, archive tool and code editor from one tinyfilemanager.php script dropped into any web directory.
read the full tinyfilemanager overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is herdr or tinyfilemanager more popular?
herdr has 40,874 GitHub stars and tinyfilemanager has 5,977. herdr has the larger community by that measure.
Are herdr and tinyfilemanager free?
Both are open source. herdr is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tinyfilemanager under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between herdr and tinyfilemanager?
herdr is written in Rust and tinyfilemanager 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, herdr or tinyfilemanager?
Choose herdr if you want the larger community (40,874 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tinyfilemanager if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.