Conserve Backup vs Rclone
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted backup & recovery options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Rclone
Sync and copy files to dozens of cloud providers
| Feature | Conserve Backup | Rclone |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 58 · Fair | 100 · Excellent |
| Category | Backup & Recovery | Backup & Recovery |
| License | GPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | Rust | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | binary, bare-metal | binary, docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 278 | ★ 59,925 |
| First released | 2015 | 2014 |
| Replaces | Backblaze | Backblaze |
What are Conserve Backup and Rclone?
Conserve Backup
Conserve is a robust backup program written in Rust that creates deduplicated, versioned archives to local or remote storage. It emphasizes data safety and resumable operations.
- Deduplicated archives
- Versioned backups
- Resumable operations
- Data-safety focus
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
Conserve Backup vs Rclone: key differences
Conserve Backup is written in Rust, while Rclone is built with Go. Licensing differs — GPL-2.0 for Conserve Backup versus MIT for Rclone. Rclone has the considerably larger community, at 59,925 GitHub stars versus 278. Rclone lists first-class Docker deployment; Conserve Backup does not.
Why pick each one
Choose Conserve Backup if…
- Released under the GPL-2.0 license
- Written in Rust
- Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
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 Conserve Backup 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 Conserve Backup and Rclone free and open-source?
Yes. Conserve Backup is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Rclone under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Conserve Backup and Rclone with Docker?
Conserve Backup: check the project docs for container support. Rclone: yes.