Free CloudMounter Alternatives in 2026

Start with what CloudMounter's free version actually is

Updated 24 September 2026. Before comparing free alternatives it is worth pinning down what you are leaving, because CloudMounter's free offering differs by platform and neither version is what people assume.

On Windows, version 3.8.2156 was released on 16 September 2026 and supports Windows 7 SP1 through Windows 11. A 14-day Pro trial starts on first launch, and after it expires the vendor's own FAQ describes what remains: "the Free version provides full access to one account for Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive, while additional accounts and services are read-only." So one consumer cloud account stays writable, and your S3 buckets, SFTP servers and WebDAV shares become read-only.

On macOS there is no free version at all. Version 4.18 was released on 18 June 2026, requires macOS 12.4 or later, and offers a 7-day trial. After that the price list is a Personal licence for one Mac at $74 lifetime or $29 a year — both marked "personal use only" — or a Team licence for five Macs at $249 lifetime or $99 a year with business use allowed. On Windows the same product is a one-time purchase, $29.99 for one PC or $99.99 for five, which the FAQ confirms: "currently, the Windows version is sold as a one-time purchase, while macOS offers both."

That is the baseline. Everything below was checked in September 2026 against the vendors' own pages.

The four genuinely free options

Three of the four run on Linux, which CloudMounter does not. Three of the four mount. Only one of them is both free and a full product, and it is not the one you would have guessed two years ago.

ExpanDrive: free for personal use, and the closest match

If you want CloudMounter's behaviour for nothing, this is the answer, and the reason is a licensing change rather than a feature. Files.com acquired ExpanDrive in January 2024 and relaunched it in April 2025 with wording its announcement page does not hedge: "every cloud service, every operating system, no trial timer, no degraded free tier. Forever." The free tier covers solo users, households, freelancers and teams up to ten people, on macOS, Windows and Linux, each with a signed installer, with full read and write access. Integrations include Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Box, Dropbox, FTP, Google Cloud Storage, Google Drive, IDrive e2, Nextcloud, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, SFTP, SharePoint, Wasabi and WebDAV.

Compared with CloudMounter's Windows free mode — one consumer account writable, everything else read-only — this is not a close contest. Past ten users, ExpanDrive's Business plan is "a flat $29/month for the whole team," which is still less per seat than five CloudMounter Team licences in most team sizes.

The catch: it is a mount and nothing more. There is no bucket window with a selectable object list and a visible transfer queue. The client is also owned by a storage vendor that sells a competing service, and an "Upgrading to Files.com" page sits in the site navigation. The ExpanDrive alternatives page covers that in full.

AnyStorage: a free tier that allows commercial use

AnyStorage is the app this site makes, so here are the facts rather than the adjectives. Release 0.2.24 shipped on 23 September 2026 for macOS 11 or newer, Windows 10 or newer and Linux — an amd64 AppImage or a .deb for Ubuntu 20.04 and later, and brew install --cask kilerd/tap/anystorage on macOS.

The free tier allows two storage connections, permits commercial use, and serves the built-in WebDAV server read-only. That commercial-use permission is the specific difference from CloudMounter's macOS Personal licence, which says "personal use only" at $74 lifetime or $29 a year. Mounting needs no filesystem driver: the app runs a WebDAV server on http://127.0.0.1:3211 and Finder, File Explorer, GNOME Files, Dolphin or davfs2 mounts that, so there is no macFUSE install and no reduced-security boot on Apple silicon. More than 20 connection types are available, with Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob, Alibaba Cloud OSS and Tencent Cloud COS as their own types — R2 appears in none of CloudMounter's published connection lists. Credentials are stored encrypted on the machine and there is no account to create.

The catch: two connections is a hard cap, and a read-write mount, search, preview, bulk operations and unlimited connections are Pro features. There is no offline sync, no CLI and no arm64 Linux build. For the platform-specific version of this page, see S3 client for Mac or S3 client for Linux.

rclone: free without qualification, and the most work

rclone is free under the MIT licence with no tiers at all, runs on Linux, Windows, macOS and FreeBSD, and supports over 70 storage products including Cloudflare R2. rclone mount gives you the drive, and for scheduled copies it has no rival on this page.

The catch: the mount is a configuration project. The documentation says outright that "to run rclone mount on Windows, you will need to download and install WinFsp," and about write behaviour it warns that "without the use of --vfs-cache-mode this can only write files sequentially, it can only seek when reading. This means that many applications won't work with their files on an rclone mount without --vfs-cache-mode writes or --vfs-cache-mode full." If you came to CloudMounter because you wanted to avoid exactly this, rclone is not a lateral move. The official web GUI is still described as experimental. See rclone mount alternatives.

Cyberduck: free, but it does not mount

Cyberduck 9.5.4 was released on 25 August 2026, is GPL, costs nothing, and covers FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, SMB, Amazon S3, OpenStack Swift, Backblaze B2, Azure, OneDrive, Google Drive and Dropbox on macOS 10.13 or later and Windows 10 or later. If you bought CloudMounter to look at files rather than to get a drive letter, this replaces it for free today.

The catch: no mounting — that is Mountain Duck's job, sold separately — no Linux build, and a donation prompt that a contribution of at least 10 USD removes by returning a registration key. The Cyberduck alternatives page compares the whole field.

Pick by need

• You want CloudMounter's exact behaviour for nothing, on one machine: ExpanDrive, free for personal use on macOS, Windows or Linux.
• You need commercial use and you only have a couple of remotes: AnyStorage's free tier allows it; CloudMounter's macOS Personal licence does not.
• You need Linux: AnyStorage, ExpanDrive or rclone. CloudMounter has no Linux build.
• You only wanted to browse and transfer: Cyberduck, free, no mount.
• You are happy to pay and you are on Windows: CloudMounter at $29.99 once is the cheapest paid mount in this comparison, and it does not expire.
• You are on a Mac and paying: compare CloudMounter's $74 lifetime against Mountain Duck, which does not publish a price at all — see Mountain Duck alternatives.

Questions