Backrest 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?
Compare Backrest with
choose an app… Syncthing LocalSend MinIO Rclone copyparty Puter croc Spacedrive Nextcloud File Browser Restic SeaweedFS Cloudreve Magic Wormhole Duplicati Kopia Velero bup Duplicacy CKAN pgBackRest bitmagnet Timeshift WAL-G Docker Volume Backup Sanoid rsnapshot Backup wrapper nono Backup-rsync-time-backup Barman mydumper Rustic Back In Time pgBackWeb SnapRAID Vorta Open Archiver Wayback btrbk mail-archiver Backup tool nono Plakar borgmatic Autorestic BackupPC MySQL backup XtraBackup Restic REST Server Gickup Stash by AppsCode Restic alt MiniBackup Restic Browser rdiff-backup Bareos ElkarBackup alt Snapper zrepl K8up Ganymede Bupstash UrBackup Kanister linux-timemachine ZFS Autobackup MySQL Backup Container Restic Cron ZnapZend Restic Mailer BorgWarehouse Deja Dup Burp Backblaze alt Kopia-UI Standalone Knoxite ArchivesSpace ElkarBackup Collective Access - Providence Duplicacy alt MailpileBackup nono pgmoneta Duplicity Conserve Backup Backblaze alt nono Nxs-backup Amanda Tarsnap GUI Minarca Backup DAR Obnam2 Rdiffweb Restic Exporter Kup Minarca BackupNinja Time Machine Eonvelope Yuno Archive Custom Backup Sosse HashBackup
Compare BorgBackup with
choose an app… Syncthing LocalSend MinIO Rclone copyparty Puter croc Spacedrive Nextcloud File Browser Restic SeaweedFS Cloudreve Magic Wormhole Duplicati Kopia Velero bup Duplicacy CKAN pgBackRest bitmagnet Timeshift WAL-G Docker Volume Backup Sanoid rsnapshot Backup wrapper nono Backup-rsync-time-backup Barman mydumper Rustic Back In Time pgBackWeb SnapRAID Vorta Open Archiver Wayback btrbk mail-archiver Backup tool nono Plakar borgmatic Autorestic BackupPC MySQL backup XtraBackup Restic REST Server Gickup Stash by AppsCode Restic alt MiniBackup Restic Browser rdiff-backup Bareos ElkarBackup alt Snapper zrepl K8up Ganymede Bupstash UrBackup Kanister linux-timemachine ZFS Autobackup MySQL Backup Container Restic Cron ZnapZend Restic Mailer BorgWarehouse Deja Dup Burp Backblaze alt Kopia-UI Standalone Knoxite ArchivesSpace ElkarBackup Collective Access - Providence Duplicacy alt MailpileBackup nono pgmoneta Duplicity Conserve Backup Backblaze alt nono Nxs-backup Amanda Tarsnap GUI Minarca Backup DAR Obnam2 Rdiffweb Restic Exporter Kup Minarca BackupNinja Time Machine Eonvelope Yuno Archive Custom Backup Sosse HashBackup
Feature Backrest BorgBackup Category Backup & Recovery Backup & Recovery License GPL-3.0 BSD-3-Clause Language TypeScript Python Setup difficulty Easy Medium Min. RAM 256 MB 256 MB Deployment docker, binary binary, bare-metal GitHub stars ★ 7,071 ★ 13,588 First released 2024 2015 Replaces Backblaze Carbonite, Backblaze
Why pick each one
Choose Backrest if… Makes Restic approachable Good scheduling Lightweight Backrest details Choose BorgBackup if… Excellent space efficiency Strong security Battle-tested BorgBackup details
Frequently asked questions Is Backrest or BorgBackup better? Neither is universally better. BorgBackup has the larger community, while Backrest is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Backrest and BorgBackup free and open-source? Yes. Backrest is licensed under GPL-3.0 and BorgBackup under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Backrest and BorgBackup with Docker? Backrest: yes. BorgBackup: check the project docs for container support.