Conserve Backup vs Rustic
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted backup & recovery options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Conserve Backup | Rustic |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 58 · Fair | 88 · Excellent |
| Category | Backup & Recovery | Backup & Recovery |
| License | GPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Rust | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | binary, bare-metal | binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 278 | ★ 3,273 |
| First released | 2015 | 2022 |
| Replaces | Backblaze | Backblaze, CrashPlan |
What are Conserve Backup and Rustic?
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
Rustic
Rustic is a backup tool written in Rust that creates fast, encrypted, and deduplicated backups. It is fully compatible with Restic repositories while offering lower memory usage.
- Restic-compatible repositories
- Low memory footprint
- Cold storage support
Conserve Backup vs Rustic: key differences
Both projects are written in Rust. Licensing differs — GPL-2.0 for Conserve Backup versus Apache-2.0 for Rustic. Conserve Backup is the more established project (first released 2015), while Rustic arrived in 2022. Rustic has the considerably larger community, at 3,273 GitHub stars versus 278.
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 Rustic if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- Active community (3.3k GitHub stars)
- Written in Rust
- Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Conserve Backup or Rustic better?
Neither is universally better. Rustic has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Conserve Backup and Rustic free and open-source?
Yes. Conserve Backup is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Rustic under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Conserve Backup and Rustic with Docker?
Conserve Backup: check the project docs for container support. Rustic: check the project docs for container support.