CKAN vs Rustic

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?
FeatureCKANRustic
CategoryBackup & RecoveryBackup & Recovery
LicenseAGPL-3.0Apache-2.0
LanguagePythonRust
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM512 MB128 MB
Deploymentbare-metalbinary
GitHub stars★ 5,088★ 3,170
First released20262022
ReplacesBackblaze, CrashPlan

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 Rustic if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • Active community (3.2k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Rust
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Rustic details

Frequently asked questions

Is CKAN or Rustic better?

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

Are CKAN and Rustic free and open-source?

Yes. CKAN is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Rustic under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run CKAN and Rustic with Docker?

CKAN: check the project docs for container support. Rustic: check the project docs for container support.

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