rclone/docs/content/commands/rclone_copy.md

---
title: "rclone copy"
description: "Copy files from source to dest, skipping identical files."
slug: rclone_copy
url: /commands/rclone_copy/
# autogenerated - DO NOT EDIT, instead edit the source code in cmd/copy/ and as part of making a release run "make commanddocs"
---
# rclone copy

Copy files from source to dest, skipping identical files.

## Synopsis


Copy the source to the destination.  Does not transfer files that are
identical on source and destination, testing by size and modification
time or MD5SUM.  Doesn't delete files from the destination. If you
want to also delete files from destination, to make it match source,
use the [sync](/commands/rclone_sync/) command instead.

Note that it is always the contents of the directory that is synced,
not the directory itself. So when source:path is a directory, it's the
contents of source:path that are copied, not the directory name and
contents.

To copy single files, use the [copyto](/commands/rclone_copyto/)
command instead.

If dest:path doesn't exist, it is created and the source:path contents
go there.

For example

    rclone copy source:sourcepath dest:destpath

Let's say there are two files in sourcepath

    sourcepath/one.txt
    sourcepath/two.txt

This copies them to

    destpath/one.txt
    destpath/two.txt

Not to

    destpath/sourcepath/one.txt
    destpath/sourcepath/two.txt

If you are familiar with `rsync`, rclone always works as if you had
written a trailing `/` - meaning "copy the contents of this directory".
This applies to all commands and whether you are talking about the
source or destination.

See the [--no-traverse](/docs/#no-traverse) option for controlling
whether rclone lists the destination directory or not.  Supplying this
option when copying a small number of files into a large destination
can speed transfers up greatly.

For example, if you have many files in /path/to/src but only a few of
them change every day, you can copy all the files which have changed
recently very efficiently like this:

    rclone copy --max-age 24h --no-traverse /path/to/src remote:

**Note**: Use the `-P`/`--progress` flag to view real-time transfer statistics.

**Note**: Use the `--dry-run` or the `--interactive`/`-i` flag to test without copying anything.


```
rclone copy source:path dest:path [flags]
```

## Options

```
      --create-empty-src-dirs   Create empty source dirs on destination after copy
  -h, --help                    help for copy
```

See the [global flags page](/flags/) for global options not listed here.

## SEE ALSO

* [rclone](/commands/rclone/)	 - Show help for rclone commands, flags and backends.