Autorestic vs Rclone
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted backup & recovery options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Rclone
Sync and copy files to dozens of cloud providers
| Feature | Autorestic | Rclone |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 52 · Fair | 100 · Excellent |
| Category | Backup & Recovery | Backup & Recovery |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,868 | ★ 59,925 |
| First released | 2019 | 2014 |
| Replaces | Backblaze, CrashPlan | Backblaze |
What are Autorestic and Rclone?
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
Rclone
Rclone is a command-line program to manage, sync, and copy files across more than seventy cloud storage providers. It targets users moving or backing up data between storage systems. It is deployed as a single binary.
- Supports 70+ cloud providers
- Encryption and mount support
- Powerful sync and copy
- Single self-contained binary
Autorestic vs Rclone: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Autorestic versus MIT for Rclone. Autorestic is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 128 MB for Rclone. Rclone is the more established project (first released 2014), while Autorestic arrived in 2019. Rclone has the considerably larger community, at 59,925 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 Rclone if…
- Works with almost any cloud
- Extremely versatile
- Reliable
Watch out for
- Not a snapshot backup tool
- Command-line focused
Frequently asked questions
Is Autorestic or Rclone better?
Neither is universally better. Rclone 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 Rclone free and open-source?
Yes. Autorestic is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Rclone under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Autorestic and Rclone with Docker?
Autorestic: yes. Rclone: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Autorestic or Rclone?
Autorestic has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 128 MB for Rclone. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.