elio vs FModel
elio
elio-fm.github.ioFModel
fmodel.appSide by side
| Figure | elio | FModel |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Terminal File Managers | 8.5 (#5) | 8.3 (#10) |
| Spec score · File managers | 8.2 (#13) | 7.8 (#21) |
| Purpose | elio is a terminal file manager with rich previews, inline images, bulk actions, and trash support. | FModel is freeware for exploring Unreal Engine game archives. |
Plans
In their own words
elio
elio is a free, open-source terminal file manager for Linux, macOS, Windows, and self-hosted use. Its Places, Files, and Preview panes offer grid and list views, with keyboard and mouse navigation. It previews text, code, documents, archives, media, and other file types; supported terminals can display images inline. File operations include creating and extracting common archives, finding duplicates, and trashing, restoring, or permanently deleting items. Remote file access is supported. Shell wrappers for bash, zsh, fish, and Nushell can return the shell to the browsed directory when elio closes, and an optional zoxide integration opens a picker using recorded directory history. It works without extra preview tools; optional Poppler, FFmpeg, resvg, and 7-Zip tools add preview and archive capabilities. Installation methods are listed for several Linux distributions, macOS through Homebrew, FreeBSD, and Cargo. elio can be configured as a file chooser on Linux and FreeBSD.
FModel
FModel is free, open-source Windows software for exploring and extracting content from games made with Unreal Engine. It can browse game archives, including encrypted ones, and compare two archive states to identify new or modified packages; encrypted archives require an AES key. It parses more than 30 asset types, displays their properties and offers image, audio and 3D viewing for supported content. Package properties can be shown in formats including JSON, INI, XML and TXT, and models can be saved as PSK files. An Export Session window supports batching raw data, model, world, texture and animation exports. The August 2026 release added USD export for meshes, animations, materials and worlds, plus WebP export and texture quality settings. Whole-level export is in USDA format, and sockets or attachments may not always be placed correctly. FModel is distributed as a portable x64 executable in a ZIP archive. It requires .NET 10.0 or later, and some games may require up to 2 GB of free RAM.