BorgBackup vs Wayback

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?
FeatureBorgBackupWayback
CategoryBackup & RecoveryBackup & Recovery
LicenseBSD-3-ClauseGPL-3.0
LanguagePythonGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM256 MB512 MB
Deploymentbinary, bare-metalbare-metal
GitHub stars★ 13,588★ 2,223
First released20152024
ReplacesCarbonite, Backblaze

Why pick each one

Choose BorgBackup if…

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

Choose Wayback if…

  • Released under the GPL-3.0 license
  • Active community (2.2k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Go
  • Lightweight — runs in 512 MB RAM
Wayback details

Frequently asked questions

Is BorgBackup or Wayback 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 Wayback free and open-source?

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

Can I run BorgBackup and Wayback with Docker?

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

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