What is Rufus used for?

Rufus is a small Windows utility for formatting USB drives and creating bootable media from ISO images, with UEFI, Secure Boot and Windows To Go support. It is a good fit for preparing Windows or Linux installers, formatting USB drives, and creating rescue and DOS boot media.

Is Rufus open source?

Yes. Rufus is open source under the GPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at pbatard/rufus and is written mainly in C.

Yes. Rufus is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

What are some alternatives to Rufus?

Similar open-source tools in the Developer Tools category include Ventoy, balenaEtcher and Windows Terminal. SaaS products in the same category include Araxis Merge, DBC Utility and Fork.

Is Rufus actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Rufus was on 28 September 2026, and the latest release is v4.15, published on 30 June 2026. The project has 38k stars on GitHub.

Rufus: open-source developer tools

About Rufus

Rufus is a tool for formatting USB flash drives and making them bootable. It is written in C, released under the GPL-3.0 license, and designed to be small, portable and free of installation. It can format USB sticks, memory cards and virtual drives with file systems such as FAT32, NTFS, UDF, exFAT, ReFS, ext2 and ext3.

Its main job is creating bootable media: from ISO images for Windows, Linux and others, from compressed disk images, for DOS using FreeDOS or MS-DOS, and for BIOS or UEFI boot including UEFI bootable NTFS. It can create Windows To Go drives and Windows 11 installation media for PCs without TPM or Secure Boot, set up persistent Linux partitions, and produce VHD, DD, VHDX and FFU images of existing drives.

Extra tools calculate SHA-512, SHA-256, SHA-1 and MD5 checksums, perform bad block checks that include detecting fake flash drives, and validate UEFI bootable media at runtime. Rufus can also download official Microsoft Windows retail ISOs and UEFI Shell images, and the interface is available in 38 languages. It suits IT technicians and enthusiasts who regularly prepare installation media.

Key features

Create bootable USB drives from ISO images
BIOS and UEFI boot support, including Secure Boot
Windows To Go and Windows 11 install media
Persistent Linux partitions
Checksum and bad block checking
Download official Windows ISOs
Portable with no installation

Good fit for

→Preparing Windows or Linux installers
→Formatting USB drives
→Creating rescue and DOS boot media

Built with: C
Tags: usb; bootable-usb; iso; uefi; windows; formatting; utilities; secure-boot

Rufus: questions and answers

What is Rufus used for?: Rufus is a small Windows utility for formatting USB drives and creating bootable media from ISO images, with UEFI, Secure Boot and Windows To Go support. It is a good fit for preparing Windows or Linux installers, formatting USB drives, and creating rescue and DOS boot media.
Is Rufus open source?: Yes. Rufus is open source under the GPL-3.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at pbatard/rufus and is written mainly in C.
Is Rufus free?: Yes. Rufus is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
What are some alternatives to Rufus?: Similar open-source tools in the Developer Tools category include Ventoy, balenaEtcher and Windows Terminal. SaaS products in the same category include Araxis Merge, DBC Utility and Fork.
Is Rufus actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Rufus was on 28 September 2026, and the latest release is v4.15, published on 30 June 2026. The project has 38k stars on GitHub.