DownGit has been a go-to website for downloading a single GitHub folder for years — paste a URL, get a .zip. Here's an honest look at how a browser extension approach compares.
DownGit is a standalone website: you copy a GitHub folder's URL, paste it into DownGit's page, and its server fetches and zips the folder for you to download. It's a focused, single-purpose tool and it does that one job reliably.
RepoKit adds the download button directly onto the GitHub page itself — no copying a URL, no switching tabs to a separate website, no pasting anything. It also runs the fetch-and-zip process entirely inside your browser using JSZip rather than routing the request through an external server, which matters most for private repositories or sensitive projects where you'd rather not have a third party's server see which folder you requested.
| DownGit | RepoKit | |
|---|---|---|
| Workflow | Copy URL, switch tab, paste, download | Click a button on the page you're already viewing |
| Where processing happens | DownGit's server | Entirely in your browser |
| Works on private repos | Requires pasting a token into the website | Yes, via a locally-stored token, never sent to a third party |
| Also shows file sizes | No — single-purpose tool | Yes, on every file and folder |
| Also has file search | No | Yes — Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+K |
| Also detects duplicates | No | Yes |
| Setup | None — visit the site each time | Install once, works automatically after |
If folder downloading is genuinely the only thing you need and you don't mind the copy-paste workflow, DownGit remains a perfectly reasonable tool. RepoKit is the better fit if you'd rather the download button live on the page itself, want the same convenience on private repos without pasting a token into a third-party site, or want the other browsing features — sizes, search, duplicates — alongside it rather than as separate tools.
No separate website, no copy-pasting URLs, nothing routed through a third-party server.
Add RepoKit to Chrome — it's free
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