Amanda vs Barman
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
Barman
Backup and recovery manager for PostgreSQL
| Feature | Amanda | Barman |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Backup & Recovery | Backup & Recovery |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | C | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal | bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 267 | ★ 3,214 |
| First released | 1991 | 2012 |
| Replaces | Veeam, CommVault | Veeam |
Why pick each one
Choose Amanda if…
- Released under the BSD-3-Clause license
- Written in C
- Lightweight — runs in 512 MB RAM
Choose Barman if…
- Released under the GPL-3.0 license
- Active community (3.2k GitHub stars)
- Written in Python
- Tiny footprint — runs in 256 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Amanda or Barman better?
Neither is universally better. Barman has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Amanda and Barman free and open-source?
Yes. Amanda is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Barman under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Amanda and Barman with Docker?
Amanda: check the project docs for container support. Barman: check the project docs for container support.