SHSelfHostIndex

ElkarBackup alt Snapper vs rdiff-backup

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?
EL ElkarBackup alt Snapper Btrfs snapshot management tool with rollback VS RD rdiff-backup Reverse-incremental backups preserving file history
FeatureElkarBackup alt Snapperrdiff-backup
CategoryBackup & RecoveryBackup & Recovery
LicenseGPL-2.0GPL-2.0
LanguageC++Python
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM64 MB64 MB
Deploymentbare-metalbinary
GitHub stars★ 1,158★ 1,264
First released20112001
ReplacesTime MachineTime Machine

Why pick each one

Choose ElkarBackup alt Snapper if…

  • Released under the GPL-2.0 license
  • Active community (1.2k GitHub stars)
  • Written in C++
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
ElkarBackup alt Snapper details

Choose rdiff-backup if…

  • Released under the GPL-2.0 license
  • Active community (1.3k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Python
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
rdiff-backup details

Frequently asked questions

Is ElkarBackup alt Snapper or rdiff-backup better?

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

Are ElkarBackup alt Snapper and rdiff-backup free and open-source?

Yes. ElkarBackup alt Snapper is licensed under GPL-2.0 and rdiff-backup under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run ElkarBackup alt Snapper and rdiff-backup with Docker?

ElkarBackup alt Snapper: check the project docs for container support. rdiff-backup: check the project docs for container support.

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