bup vs Rclone

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?
FeaturebupRclone
CategoryBackup & RecoveryBackup & Recovery
LicenseLGPL-2.1MIT
LanguagePythonGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM128 MB128 MB
Deploymentbinarybinary, docker
GitHub stars★ 7,337★ 58,995
First released20102014
ReplacesTime MachineBackblaze

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 Rclone if…

  • Works with almost any cloud
  • Extremely versatile
  • Reliable
Rclone details

Frequently asked questions

Is bup 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 bup and Rclone free and open-source?

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

Can I run bup and Rclone with Docker?

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

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