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balenaEtcher vs Raspberry Pi Imager: catalog facts
balenaEtcher	Raspberry Pi Imager
Free Free and open source under the Apache 2.0 licence. Balena sells separate commercial device…	Free Free from Raspberry Pi.
Windows, macOS, Linux	Windows, macOS, Linux
Hides system drives, so the classic wrong-disk accident is much harder Verifies the write by reading the media back	Official tool maintained by Raspberry Pi Writes to both SD cards and USB drives
An Electron app doing a job a 200 KB tool could do No persistent storage or multi-boot; one image per stick	Built mainly around Raspberry Pi use rather than general disk imaging
Downloadable app	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License: Apache-2.0	License not stated
No account needed	No account needed
Works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 21, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026

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