BorgBackup vs CKAN

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?
FeatureBorgBackupCKAN
CategoryBackup & RecoveryBackup & Recovery
LicenseBSD-3-ClauseAGPL-3.0
LanguagePythonPython
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM256 MB512 MB
Deploymentbinary, bare-metalbare-metal
GitHub stars★ 13,588★ 5,088
First released20152026
ReplacesCarbonite, Backblaze

Why pick each one

Choose BorgBackup if…

  • Excellent space efficiency
  • Strong security
  • Battle-tested
BorgBackup details

Choose CKAN if…

  • Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
  • Mature project with 5.1k GitHub stars
  • Written in Python
  • Lightweight — runs in 512 MB RAM
CKAN details

Frequently asked questions

Is BorgBackup or CKAN 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 CKAN free and open-source?

Yes. BorgBackup is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and CKAN under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run BorgBackup and CKAN with Docker?

BorgBackup: check the project docs for container support. CKAN: check the project docs for container support.

Related comparisons