Comparison

Mountit compared with ExpanDrive, Mountain Duck and the rest

Six products people actually weigh against Mountit, each described from its own vendor’s site rather than from memory — pricing, what it actually does (a mount, or a browser you drag files through), and what its own page does and does not say about how it works. Where a vendor does not publish something, this page says so instead of guessing.

Side by side

Sorted with Mountit first; the rest in no particular order. Every non-Mountit row cites the vendor page it came from — see Sources below.

Mountit

Ours

A caching volume in Finder for 38 file, object and cloud services, and the two block protocols in Mountit Pro.

How it mounts
File Provider — no kernel extension, ever shipped. An FSKit module for a real /Volumes mount ships in Mountit Pro and does not mount yet.
Price
Standard: €29 once or €12/year (Mac App Store). Mountit Pro: €49–€89 once, or €25–€79/year, by tier — see /pricing.
Good for
Someone who wants the widest protocol list with a published, per-service evidence level, and would rather buy once than subscribe.
Watch out
No public build yet (see /download), and the evidence ledger is honest that most services are compile-verified rather than run against a live server — /compatibility says exactly which.

ExpanDrive

A cross-platform (Mac, Windows, Linux) drive-mounting client for cloud storage and SFTP/FTP/WebDAV servers.

How it mounts
Presents drives as "native" to the OS; the underlying mechanism (kernel extension, FUSE, or a File Provider–style API) is not stated on the marketing or pricing pages.
Price
Free tier: $0, one device. Business: $29/month for up to 10 users, billed monthly, cancel anytime — a subscription, not a one-time purchase.
Good for
Windows and Linux support in the same product — Mountit is Apple-platforms only. A team standardising on one cross-platform tool.
Watch out
The only individual/non-business paid tier is priced and packaged for teams (10 users per $29/month block); there is no stated single-user perpetual price.

ExpanDrive — product site ↗ ExpanDrive — pricing ↗

Mountain Duck

Mounts servers and cloud storage as a drive on macOS and Windows; built by the same team as Cyberduck, and shares its protocol code.

How it mounts
Its own site states the newer "Integrated connect mode" uses File Provider on macOS and Cloud Files on Windows — "no device driver installation or network mount required." That is the same category of approach Mountit uses: no kernel extension.
Price
Per-seat licence, valid for one specific major version, with a paid upgrade to the next — the vendor page does not publish the number, only the model.
Good for
Windows support, and a long protocol list built on the same code as Cyberduck. Worth a look if File Provider (not a real /Volumes mount) is what you actually need and Windows matters.
Watch out
The perpetual-per-major-version model is close to Mountit’s own, so the real comparison is protocol coverage and price, not the mount mechanism — both avoid a kernel extension for the same reason.

Mountain Duck — product site ↗ Mountain Duck — buy / licensing ↗

CloudMounter

A cloud-storage mounting utility for macOS and Windows, from Eltima.

How it mounts
Its site says drives are "Built into Finder and Explorer" — the underlying mechanism is not stated.
Price
Not published on the product’s own marketing page; separate pricing pages exist per platform. Requires macOS 12.4 or later.
Good for
MEGA support — one of a small number of tools on this page that reaches it. Mountit’s own MEGA connection is read-only today; CloudMounter’s write support is not something this page can verify either way.
Watch out
No stated evidence process for which protocols have actually been tested against a live server, the way /compatibility publishes for Mountit.

CloudMounter — product site ↗

Transmit

A file-transfer client from Panic — FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, S3 and a dozen more, browsed and moved, not mounted.

How it mounts
None. Transmit’s own site describes it as a transfer tool; it does not put a remote server in Finder as a drive at all.
Price
$45, one-time, perpetual licence. Seven-day free trial. Upgrade pricing for existing Transmit 4 owners.
Good for
A one-time $45 if what you actually do is drag files between a server and your Mac, and you do not need the server to behave like a folder the rest of your apps can open.
Watch out
Nothing here opens in place. If an app needs to read or write the remote file directly — the entire reason to mount one — Transmit is not that tool by design, not by omission.

Panic — Transmit ↗

ForkLift

A dual-pane file manager from Binary Nights, connecting to SFTP, FTP, WebDAV, S3, SMB, AFP, NFS and several clouds from inside its own window.

How it mounts
Its site describes connecting to "remote volumes" inside ForkLift’s own browser panes; whether that also places a real mount in Finder, and by what mechanism, is not stated on the marketing page.
Price
Not published on the vendor’s marketing page. Requires macOS 14.6 or later.
Good for
Local file management — ForkLift is a genuinely capable dual-pane manager for the files already on your Mac, with remote connections as one more pane rather than the whole product.
Watch out
If what you want is a remote service behaving like an ordinary folder to every other app on your Mac — Preview, your editor, git — confirm that before buying; a file manager’s own browser is a narrower promise than a Finder mount.

Binary Nights — ForkLift ↗

Cyberduck

A free, open-source (GPL) file-transfer browser for FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, S3 and a long list of clouds — from the same team as Mountain Duck.

How it mounts
None by itself — Cyberduck’s own site is explicit that mounting a server as a drive is what its sibling product, Mountain Duck, is for. Cyberduck is the free browser; the mount is a separate, paid product.
Price
Free. No account or registration required; a donation is invited, never required.
Good for
Zero cost, no kernel extension of any kind (there is nothing to mount), and one of the longest protocol lists of anything on this page, including DRACOON, Spectra BlackPearl and iRODS.
Watch out
It is a browser, not a mount — the same limitation as Transmit and, on the evidence available, ForkLift: apps outside Cyberduck cannot open a remote file directly.

Cyberduck — product site ↗

Where Mountit actually differs

Three of the six — Transmit, ForkLift and Cyberduck — are browsers, not mounts: nothing outside their own window can open a remote file directly. That is a genuinely different product from Mountit, not a worse one; it is the right tool when what you actually do is drag files in and out rather than have an app open one in place.

Of the two that do mount a drive, Mountain Duck’s newer connect mode avoids a kernel extension the same way Mountit does — through the OS’s own File Provider API rather than a third-party driver. Where Mountit differs there is the ledger: every service’s evidence level is published, including the ones that have not been run against a real server yet, rather than asserted without a source a reader can check.

What we will not claim: that Mountit is a drop-in replacement for a dual-pane local file manager (ForkLift’s actual strength), or that it reaches Windows and Linux the way ExpanDrive and Mountain Duck do. It does not, today.

The 38 services, one page each Comparing mount mechanisms

Questions

Why does a competing product list its competitors’ prices honestly?

Because getting caught rounding a competitor’s price down, or its licence terms up, costs more trust than the sale is worth — and because the alternative is a page nobody can use to actually decide anything. Where a vendor’s own site does not publish a number, this page says so instead of guessing one.

What is the real difference between a "mount" and a "browser"?

A mount puts the remote server where every app on your Mac can open a file directly — Preview, your code editor, git status, a build tool. A browser (Transmit, Cyberduck, and ForkLift’s own panes) is its own window: you drag a file in or out of it, and nothing outside that window can see the remote file until you do. Both are legitimate tools for different jobs; this page exists because the two get sold with the same words.

Why is rclone not on this page?

It is on /macfuse instead, alongside FUSE-T, plain NFS and the other mechanisms that replaced a dying macFUSE. This page is about commercial products people compare Mountit to directly; that one is about how a mount actually gets onto your Mac.

Which of these actually avoid a kernel extension, the way Mountit does?

Confirmed from the vendor’s own site: Mountain Duck’s newer connect mode, via File Provider — the same category of approach Mountit uses. Transmit, ForkLift and Cyberduck need no kernel extension because none of them mount a drive at all; they are browsers. ExpanDrive and CloudMounter do not state their mechanism publicly, so this page does not guess it.

Sources

Every claim on this page about somebody else’s software came from one of these, read on 3 September 2026. Third-party facts age; if one of these has moved on and this page has not, tell us and it gets corrected.