CKAN vs Restic

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?
FeatureCKANRestic
CategoryBackup & RecoveryBackup & Recovery
LicenseAGPL-3.0BSD-2-Clause
LanguagePythonGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM512 MB256 MB
Deploymentbare-metalbinary, docker
GitHub stars★ 5,088★ 35,412
First released20262015
ReplacesBackblaze, Carbonite

Why pick each one

Choose CKAN if…

  • Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
  • Mature project with 5.1k GitHub stars
  • Written in Python
  • Lightweight — runs in 512 MB RAM
CKAN details

Choose Restic if…

  • Strong encryption
  • Efficient deduplication
  • Wide backend support
Restic details

Frequently asked questions

Is CKAN or Restic better?

Neither is universally better. Restic has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are CKAN and Restic free and open-source?

Yes. CKAN is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Restic under BSD-2-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run CKAN and Restic with Docker?

CKAN: check the project docs for container support. Restic: yes.

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