rclone — rsync for Cloud Storage Across 70+ Providers

Introduction

rclone, originally a one-person project by Nick Craig-Wood, is now the de-facto tool for pushing bytes between cloud storage. It speaks 70+ protocols (every major cloud, WebDAV, SFTP, S3-compatible, Backblaze B2, Internet Archive, Storj, etc.) and lets you mount any of them as a local filesystem.

With over 56,000 GitHub stars, rclone is used by sysadmins, photographers, researchers, and backup tools (it's the engine behind several commercial backup products). If it stores bytes, rclone probably talks to it.

What rclone Does

rclone exposes a unified CLI across 70+ backends. Configure "remotes" (named credentials for each provider), then use verbs: ls, copy, sync, move, check, mount, serve. Advanced features include encryption-at-rest for any backend, bandwidth throttling, filtering, partial uploads, and checksum verification.

Architecture Overview

rclone binary
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[rclone.conf] — per-remote credentials (~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf)
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[Backend drivers]
   s3, gcs, azure, dropbox, drive, onedrive,
   webdav, sftp, ftp, http, b2, wasabi, storj,
   mega, mailru, pcloud, yandex, smb, 70+ more
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[Core operations]
   copy / sync / move / ls / mount / serve /
   check / cleanup / dedupe / cryptcheck
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[Optional layers]
   crypt — encrypt on-write, decrypt on-read
   union  — merge multiple backends as one
   cache  — local disk cache for slow backends
   chunker, combine, compress, alias

Self-Hosting & Configuration

# ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf
[gdrive]
type = drive
client_id = ...
client_secret = ...
scope = drive
token = {"access_token":"..."}

[b2]
type = b2
account = ...
key = ...

[b2-crypt]
type = crypt
remote = b2:my-bucket/encrypted
password = encrypted-password
password2 = encrypted-salt

[s3-wasabi]
type = s3
provider = Wasabi
access_key_id = ...
secret_access_key = ...
region = us-east-1
endpoint = s3.wasabisys.com

# Sync with filters + bandwidth limit + progress
rclone sync ~/photos b2-crypt:photos \
  --filter "+ *.jpg" --filter "+ *.raw" --filter "- *" \
  --bwlimit 10M --progress --transfers 4 --checkers 8

# Mount as filesystem (runs in background with --daemon)
rclone mount gdrive:backups /mnt/gdrive --vfs-cache-mode writes --daemon

# Serve as WebDAV for apps that speak WebDAV
rclone serve webdav gdrive:Work --addr :8080

# Verify integrity (compare checksums)
rclone check ~/photos b2-crypt:photos

# Migrate between clouds (e.g., dropbox to gdrive)
rclone sync dropbox:myfolder gdrive:myfolder --progress

Key Features

• 70+ backends — every major cloud, plus SFTP/WebDAV/HTTP/SMB/IMAP
• sync + copy + move + check — rsync-style semantics across clouds
• Mount as filesystem — read/write any cloud as /mnt/x
• Encryption at rest — transparent crypt wrapper on any backend
• Bandwidth throttling — --bwlimit, --bwlimit-file for scheduled limits
• Filters — rsync-style include/exclude patterns
• Resumable transfers — chunked uploads with retry + integrity check
• Cross-cloud migration — direct server-to-server in many cases

Comparison with Similar Tools

FAQ

Q: Is rclone safe for my data? A: Yes — widely audited, used by backup products. For extra safety, wrap sensitive data with the crypt backend (encryption on your side).

Q: How fast is it? A: Very fast. With --transfers 16 --checkers 32 and a good network, it saturates most links. Per-backend limits (e.g., Google Drive API quotas) often matter more than rclone itself.

Q: rclone mount vs native clients? A: Native clients (Google Drive File Stream, Dropbox daemon) sync files locally; rclone mount streams on demand. For backups + occasional access, mount is lighter. For constant editing of cloud files, native clients are smoother.

Q: Does it work offline? A: Mount with --vfs-cache-mode full caches accessed files locally and flushes changes when online. Not a replacement for Dropbox-style offline, but serviceable.

Sources

• GitHub: https://github.com/rclone/rclone
• Website: https://rclone.org
• Author: Nick Craig-Wood
• License: MIT