head to head · open source
yazi vs dufs
yazi has 43,192 GitHub stars, 1,055 forks, 65 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dufs has 11,021 stars, 615 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. yazi leads on adoption by 292% (43,192 vs 11,021 stars). yazi is written in Rust under MIT; dufs is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. yazi has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, dufs 6%. yazi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (command-line), 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 | dufs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 615 |
| 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 dufs if
- You want the dufs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and dufs 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 dufs
Dufs Dufs is a distinctive utility file server that supports static serving, uploading, searching, accessing control, webdav... Features Serve static files Download folder as zip file Upload files and folders (Drag & Drop) Create/Edit/Search files Resumable/partial uploads/downloads Access control Support https Support webdav Easy to use with curl Install With cargo With docker With Homebrew Binaries on macOS, Linux, Windows Download from Github Releases, unzip and add dufs to your $PATH. CLI Examples Serve current working directory in read only mode Allow all operations like upload/delete/search/create/edit…
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Frequently asked questions
Is yazi or dufs more popular?
yazi has 43,192 GitHub stars and dufs has 11,021. yazi has the larger community by that measure.
Are yazi and dufs free?
Both are open source. yazi is licensed under MIT and dufs under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between yazi and dufs?
yazi is written in Rust and dufs 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 dufs?
Choose yazi if you want the larger community (43,192 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dufs if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.