bup vs Duplicati

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?
FeaturebupDuplicati
CategoryBackup & RecoveryBackup & Recovery
LicenseLGPL-2.1MIT
LanguagePythonC#
Setup difficultyMediumEasy
Min. RAM128 MB256 MB
Deploymentbinarydocker, bare-metal
GitHub stars★ 7,337★ 14,864
First released20102008
ReplacesTime MachineBackblaze, Carbonite

Why pick each one

Choose bup if…

  • Released under the LGPL-2.1 license
  • Mature project with 7.3k GitHub stars
  • Written in Python
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
bup details

Choose Duplicati if…

  • Friendly GUI
  • Broad storage support
  • Free
Duplicati details

Frequently asked questions

Is bup or Duplicati better?

Duplicati is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider bup if its specific feature set fits your needs better.

Are bup and Duplicati free and open-source?

Yes. bup is licensed under LGPL-2.1 and Duplicati under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run bup and Duplicati with Docker?

bup: check the project docs for container support. Duplicati: yes.

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