head to head · open source
yazi vs cryfs
yazi has 43,212 GitHub stars, 1,058 forks, 65 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. cryfs has 2,330 stars, 174 forks, 154 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. yazi leads on adoption by 1,755% (43,212 vs 2,330 stars). yazi is written in Rust under MIT; cryfs is written in Rust under LGPL-3.0. yazi has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, cryfs 7%. yazi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (filesystem), 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
| yazi | cryfs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 174 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick yazi if
- You weight community size — 43K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cryfs if
- You want the cryfs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and cryfs fits your workflow better
About yazi
Special thanks to: Yazi ⚡️ Blazing Fast Terminal File Manager Yazi (means "duck") is a terminal file manager written in Rust, based on non blocking async I/O. It aims to provide an efficient, user friendly, and customizable file management experience. 💡 A new article explaining its internal workings: Why is Yazi Fast? 🚀 Full Asynchronous Support : All I/O operations are asynchronous, CPU tasks are spread across multiple threads, making the most of available resources. 💪 Powerful Async Task Scheduling and Management : Provides real time progress updates, task cancellation, and internal task priority…
About cryfs
CryFS 2.0 (Alpha) ⚠️ ALPHA VERSION WARNING ⚠️ CryFS 2.0 alpha is experimental software. You WILL lose your data. Do not use it for anything important. For stable CryFS, please use CryFS 1.0. You can find installation instructions for the stable version here. CryFS 2.0 is in an alpha stage that has not undergone extensive testing. Use it only for testing purposes and please report any issues in the GitHub issue tracker. What is CryFS? CryFS encrypts your files so you can safely store them in cloud storage services like Dropbox, iCloud, or OneDrive. Unlike other encryption tools that encrypt files individually…
read the full cryfs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is yazi or cryfs more popular?
yazi has 43,212 GitHub stars and cryfs has 2,330. yazi has the larger community by that measure.
Are yazi and cryfs free?
Both are open source. yazi is licensed under MIT and cryfs under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between yazi and cryfs?
yazi is written in Rust and cryfs 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, yazi or cryfs?
Choose yazi if you want the larger community (43,212 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cryfs if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.