Autorestic vs Duplicacy
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted backup & recovery options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Autorestic | Duplicacy |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 52 · Fair | 76 · Good |
| Category | Backup & Recovery | Backup & Recovery |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,868 | ★ 5,683 |
| First released | 2019 | 2016 |
| Replaces | Backblaze, CrashPlan | Backblaze, Carbonite |
What are Autorestic and Duplicacy?
Autorestic
Autorestic is a higher-level wrapper around Restic that makes it easy to manage multiple backups from a single declarative configuration file. It handles backends, locations, and scheduling.
- Declarative backup config
- Multiple backends and locations
- Cron-based scheduling
Duplicacy
Duplicacy is a cross-platform cloud backup tool using a novel lock-free deduplication algorithm for efficient encrypted backups. It targets users backing up to cloud storage. It is deployed as a binary with an optional web UI.
- Lock-free deduplication
- Many cloud backends
- Cross-computer deduplication
- Optional web GUI
Autorestic vs Duplicacy: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Autorestic versus Proprietary for Duplicacy. Autorestic is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 256 MB for Duplicacy. Duplicacy is the more established project (first released 2016), while Autorestic arrived in 2019. Duplicacy has the considerably larger community, at 5,683 GitHub stars versus 1,868.
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)
Choose Duplicacy if…
- Efficient deduplication
- Good cloud support
- Reliable
Watch out for
- Web edition is paid
- CLI is free but licensed
Frequently asked questions
Is Autorestic or Duplicacy better?
Neither is universally better. Duplicacy 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 Duplicacy free and open-source?
Yes. Autorestic is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Duplicacy under Proprietary. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Autorestic and Duplicacy with Docker?
Autorestic: yes. Duplicacy: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Autorestic or Duplicacy?
Autorestic has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 256 MB for Duplicacy. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.