Backrest vs Duplicati

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?
FeatureBackrestDuplicati
CategoryBackup & RecoveryBackup & Recovery
LicenseGPL-3.0MIT
LanguageTypeScriptC#
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM256 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, binarydocker, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 7,071★ 14,864
First released20242008
ReplacesBackblazeBackblaze, Carbonite

Why pick each one

Choose Backrest if…

  • Makes Restic approachable
  • Good scheduling
  • Lightweight
Backrest details

Choose Duplicati if…

  • Friendly GUI
  • Broad storage support
  • Free
Duplicati details

Frequently asked questions

Is Backrest or Duplicati better?

Neither is universally better. Duplicati has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Backrest and Duplicati free and open-source?

Yes. Backrest is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Duplicati under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Backrest and Duplicati with Docker?

Backrest: yes. Duplicati: yes.

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