BorgBackup vs Spacedrive

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

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FeatureBorgBackupSpacedrive
CategoryBackup & RecoveryFile Sync & Storage
LicenseBSD-3-ClauseAGPL-3.0
LanguagePythonRust
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM256 MB512 MB
Deploymentbinary, bare-metalbinary
GitHub stars★ 13,588★ 38,732
First released20152022
ReplacesCarbonite, BackblazeGoogle Drive, Dropbox

Why pick each one

Choose BorgBackup if…

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

Choose Spacedrive if…

  • Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
  • Mature project with 38.7k GitHub stars
  • Written in Rust
  • Lightweight — runs in 512 MB RAM
Spacedrive details

Frequently asked questions

Is BorgBackup or Spacedrive better?

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

Are BorgBackup and Spacedrive free and open-source?

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

Can I run BorgBackup and Spacedrive with Docker?

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

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