BorgBackup vs bup
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 BorgBackup with
choose an app… Syncthing LocalSend MinIO Rclone copyparty Puter croc Spacedrive Nextcloud File Browser Restic SeaweedFS Cloudreve Magic Wormhole Duplicati Kopia Velero Backrest 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 bup with
choose an app… Syncthing LocalSend MinIO Rclone copyparty Puter croc Spacedrive Nextcloud File Browser Restic SeaweedFS Cloudreve Magic Wormhole Duplicati Kopia Velero Backrest 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 BorgBackup bup Category Backup & Recovery Backup & Recovery License BSD-3-Clause LGPL-2.1 Language Python Python Setup difficulty Medium Medium Min. RAM 256 MB 128 MB Deployment binary, bare-metal binary GitHub stars ★ 13,588 ★ 7,337 First released 2015 2010 Replaces Carbonite, Backblaze Time Machine
Why pick each one
Choose BorgBackup if… Excellent space efficiency Strong security Battle-tested BorgBackup details Choose bup if… Released under the LGPL-2.1 license Mature project with 7.3k GitHub stars Written in Python Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM bup details
Frequently asked questions Is BorgBackup or bup better? Neither is universally better. BorgBackup has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are BorgBackup and bup free and open-source? Yes. BorgBackup is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and bup under LGPL-2.1. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run BorgBackup and bup with Docker? BorgBackup: check the project docs for container support. bup: check the project docs for container support.