Vorta 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?
FeatureVortaRclone
CategoryBackup & RecoveryBackup & Recovery
LicenseGPL-3.0MIT
LanguagePythonGo
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM256 MB128 MB
Deploymentbinarybinary, docker
GitHub stars★ 2,490★ 58,995
First released20182014
ReplacesTime Machine, CrashPlanBackblaze

Why pick each one

Choose Vorta if…

  • Released under the GPL-3.0 license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • Active community (2.5k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Python
Vorta details

Choose Rclone if…

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

Frequently asked questions

Is Vorta or Rclone better?

Neither is universally better. Rclone has the larger community, while Vorta is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Vorta and Rclone free and open-source?

Yes. Vorta is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Rclone under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Vorta and Rclone with Docker?

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

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