Autorestic vs BorgBackup
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?
Autorestic
Config-driven wrapper for Restic backups
VS
BorgBackup
Deduplicating archiver with compression and encryption
| Feature | Autorestic | BorgBackup |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Backup & Recovery | Backup & Recovery |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Language | Go | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | binary, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,855 | ★ 13,588 |
| First released | 2019 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Backblaze, CrashPlan | Carbonite, Backblaze |
Why pick each one
Choose Autorestic if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (1.9k GitHub stars)
Frequently asked questions
Is Autorestic or BorgBackup better?
Neither is universally better. BorgBackup has the larger community, while Autorestic is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Autorestic and BorgBackup free and open-source?
Yes. Autorestic is licensed under Apache-2.0 and BorgBackup under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Autorestic and BorgBackup with Docker?
Autorestic: yes. BorgBackup: check the project docs for container support.