borgmatic vs Rclone
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted backup & recovery options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
borgmatic
Simple configuration-driven frontend for BorgBackup
VS
Rclone
Sync and copy files to dozens of cloud providers
| Feature | borgmatic | Rclone |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Category | Backup & Recovery | Backup & Recovery |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Language | Python | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,000 | ★ 59,925 |
| First released | 2013 | 2014 |
| Replaces | CrashPlan, Backblaze | Backblaze |
What are borgmatic and Rclone?
borgmatic
borgmatic is a command-line tool that wraps BorgBackup to make it easy to schedule and configure backups. It adds features like database dumps, monitoring hooks, and consistency checks.
- Declarative YAML configuration
- Database backup integration
- Monitoring service hooks
Rclone
Rclone is a command-line program to manage, sync, and copy files across more than seventy cloud storage providers. It targets users moving or backing up data between storage systems. It is deployed as a single binary.
- Supports 70+ cloud providers
- Encryption and mount support
- Powerful sync and copy
- Single self-contained binary
borgmatic vs Rclone: key differences
Borgmatic is written in Python, while Rclone is built with Go. Licensing differs — GPL-3.0 for borgmatic versus MIT for Rclone. Rclone has the considerably larger community, at 59,925 GitHub stars versus 2,000.
Why pick each one
Choose borgmatic if…
- Released under the GPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (2k GitHub stars)
- Written in Python
Choose Rclone if…
- Works with almost any cloud
- Extremely versatile
- Reliable
Watch out for
- Not a snapshot backup tool
- Command-line focused
Frequently asked questions
Is borgmatic or Rclone better?
Neither is universally better. Rclone has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are borgmatic and Rclone free and open-source?
Yes. borgmatic is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Rclone under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run borgmatic and Rclone with Docker?
borgmatic: yes. Rclone: yes.