BorgBackup vs Restic alt MiniBackup

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?
FeatureBorgBackupRestic alt MiniBackup
CategoryBackup & RecoveryBackup & Recovery
LicenseBSD-3-ClauseGPL-3.0
LanguagePythonGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM256 MB64 MB
Deploymentbinary, bare-metalbinary
GitHub stars★ 13,588★ 1,381
First released20152019
ReplacesCarbonite, BackblazeBackblaze

Why pick each one

Choose BorgBackup if…

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

Choose Restic alt MiniBackup if…

  • Released under the GPL-3.0 license
  • Active community (1.4k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Go
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
Restic alt MiniBackup details

Frequently asked questions

Is BorgBackup or Restic alt MiniBackup 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 Restic alt MiniBackup free and open-source?

Yes. BorgBackup is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Restic alt MiniBackup under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run BorgBackup and Restic alt MiniBackup with Docker?

BorgBackup: check the project docs for container support. Restic alt MiniBackup: check the project docs for container support.

Related comparisons