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balenaEtcher vs Bootqt: catalog facts
balenaEtcher	Bootqt
Free Free and open source under the Apache 2.0 licence. Balena sells separate commercial device…	Free Free and open source under the GPL-3.0 licence.
Windows, macOS, Linux	Linux
Hides system drives, so the classic wrong-disk accident is much harder Verifies the write by reading the media back	Few steps: select drive, select image, write Handles both ISO and IMG files
An Electron app doing a job a 200 KB tool could do No persistent storage or multi-boot; one image per stick	Linux only for now Basic feature set compared with tools such as Ventoy
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: Apache-2.0	License: GPL-3.0-only
No account needed	No account needed
Works offline	Works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 21, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 1, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.