Rclone is a free, open-source command-line tool for syncing and managing files across 70+ cloud storage providers. See features, use cases, and FAQs.
Rclone is a free, open-source command-line tool for managing and synchronizing files with cloud storage, created by Nick Craig-Wood with its first commit dated November 18, 2012. Written in Go and released under the MIT license, it has no corporate ownership and is maintained by its open-source community.
The project is often described as the Swiss Army knife of cloud storage because it replicates familiar Unix file commands, rsync, cp, mv, mount, and ls, against cloud backends, letting users work with remote storage the same way they would work with a local filesystem.
Rclone supports more than 70 cloud storage providers and protocols, including Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, Backblaze B2, and Azure Blob and Azure Files, alongside standard protocols like WebDAV, FTP, and SFTP. It offers multiple transfer modes, one-way sync, two-way sync via bisync, copy, and move, with continuous checksum verification and the ability to resume interrupted transfers.
Additional capabilities include mounting cloud storage as a local drive on Windows, macOS, Linux, and FreeBSD; serving files over SFTP, HTTP, WebDAV, and DLNA; and virtual backend layers for client-side encryption, compression, and chunking that can be applied transparently on top of any supported cloud connection.
Rclone is completely free and open source under the MIT license. There are no paid tiers, subscriptions, or usage limits imposed by the project itself; costs, if any, come only from the cloud storage providers a user connects to rclone.
Because it is community-maintained rather than sold by a company, there is no official paid support tier or enterprise contract; users rely on community documentation, forums, and the GitHub issue tracker for support.
Yes, Rclone is completely free and open source under the MIT license, with no paid tiers or subscriptions.
Rclone supports more than 70 cloud storage products and protocols, including Amazon S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Backblaze B2, and Azure.
Rclone was created by Nick Craig-Wood, with its first code commit dated November 18, 2012.
Yes, Rclone's bisync command supports two-way synchronization between a local folder and a cloud remote, or between two cloud remotes.
Not officially; Rclone is primarily a command-line tool, though community-built GUIs such as RcloneView exist.
Yes, the rclone mount command presents cloud storage as a local network drive on Windows, macOS, Linux, and FreeBSD.
Rclone supports client-side encryption through its crypt backend and continuously verifies file checksums during transfers.
Yes, Rclone is commonly run via cron jobs or Task Scheduler to automate recurring cloud backup and sync jobs.