Amanda vs pgBackRest
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
pgBackRest
Reliable backup and restore solution for PostgreSQL
| Feature | Amanda | pgBackRest |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Backup & Recovery | Backup & Recovery |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Language | C | C |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 267 | ★ 4,296 |
| First released | 1991 | 2013 |
| 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 pgBackRest if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (4.3k GitHub stars)
- Written in C
Frequently asked questions
Is Amanda or pgBackRest better?
Neither is universally better. pgBackRest has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Amanda and pgBackRest free and open-source?
Yes. Amanda is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and pgBackRest under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Amanda and pgBackRest with Docker?
Amanda: check the project docs for container support. pgBackRest: yes.