Cross-platform tool for flashing OS images to drives
Overview
What Syncthing does
Syncthing synchronises files between devices continuously, peer to peer, with no central server. Data moves directly between your machines over encrypted connections, which means there is no account to create, no storage to pay for and no third party holding the files. That is the whole proposition against Dropbox or Google Drive: the same convenience without the custodian. The cost is that there is no cloud copy, so it is synchronisation rather than backup — a deletion propagates, and if all your devices are lost the data is gone.
What people use it for
- Keeping files in step across personal machines without a cloud account
- Syncing data that must not sit on a third-party server for policy reasons
- Replacing a paid cloud storage subscription for sync-only needs
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The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Syncthing.
- Synchronisation, not backup: a deletion propagates to every device, and versioning must be configured deliberately
- Devices must be online simultaneously to sync, so an always-on machine is effectively required
- Initial setup involves exchanging device IDs and is less approachable than signing into a cloud service
- No web access to files, since there is no server holding them
Pricing
What Syncthing costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Syncthing
Free
- Full functionality
- No usage limits
- Community support
Capabilities
Features
Peer-to-peer sync
Files move directly between devices with no intermediary server
Encrypted transport
All traffic between devices is encrypted
File versioning
Configurable retention of replaced and deleted files
Selective sync
Per-folder sharing with different device sets
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
Is Syncthing free?
Yes, open source with no licence fee and no storage costs, because there is no server.
Is Syncthing a backup tool?
No. It synchronises, so deletions propagate. Use it alongside a real backup, not instead of one.
Do my files pass through anyone else’s servers?
No. Transfers are peer to peer and encrypted. Discovery and relay servers can help devices find each other, and relayed traffic remains encrypted end to end.
Keep looking
Where to go from Syncthing
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Syncthing, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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