head to head · open source
yazi vs walk
yazi has 42,463 GitHub stars, 1,029 forks, 65 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. walk has 3,641 stars, 107 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 9 months ago. yazi leads on adoption by 1,066% (42,463 vs 3,641 stars). yazi is written in Rust under MIT; walk is written in Go under MIT. yazi has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, walk 3%. yazi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cli, file-manager), 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 | walk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-21 | 2026-01-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.0K | ⑂ 107 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick yazi if
- You weight community size — 42K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick walk if
- You want the walk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and walk fits your workflow better
About yazi
Yazi is a terminal file manager written in Rust on non blocking async I/O, aimed at developers and command line users who want fast, customizable file browsing without leaving the terminal.
About walk
Walk is an MIT licensed terminal file manager written in Go that replaces the familiar pairing of cd and ls with an interactive navigator, aimed at developers and other command line users who want to move through the filesystem with arrow keys or hjkl instead of typing paths.
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Frequently asked questions
Is yazi or walk more popular?
yazi has 42,463 GitHub stars and walk has 3,641. yazi has the larger community by that measure.
Are yazi and walk free?
Both are open source. yazi is licensed under MIT and walk under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between yazi and walk?
yazi is written in Rust and walk in Go. 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 walk?
Choose yazi if you want the larger community (42,463 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose walk if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.