SHSelfHostIndex

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.

Not the right match-up?
CO Conserve Backup Robust, fast, deduplicating backup tool VS RU Rustic Fast encrypted deduplicated backup compatible with Restic
FeatureConserve BackupRustic
CategoryBackup & RecoveryBackup & Recovery
LicenseGPL-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageRustRust
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM128 MB128 MB
Deploymentbinary, bare-metalbinary
GitHub stars★ 278★ 3,170
First released20152022
ReplacesBackblazeBackblaze, CrashPlan

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
Conserve Backup 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 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.

Related comparisons