Amanda vs Bareos
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted backup & recovery options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Amanda
Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver
VS
Bareos
Backup Archiving Recovery Open Sourced
| Feature | Amanda | Bareos |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Backup & Recovery | Backup & Recovery |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | C | C++ |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 1,024 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 267 | ★ 1,232 |
| First released | 1991 | 2010 |
| Replaces | Veeam, CommVault | Veeam, CommVault |
Why pick each one
Choose Amanda if…
- Released under the BSD-3-Clause license
- Written in C
- Lightweight — runs in 512 MB RAM
Choose Bareos if…
- Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.2k GitHub stars)
- Written in C++
Frequently asked questions
Is Amanda or Bareos better?
Neither is universally better. Bareos has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Amanda and Bareos free and open-source?
Yes. Amanda is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Bareos under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Amanda and Bareos with Docker?
Amanda: check the project docs for container support. Bareos: yes.