Magic Wormhole vs Restic
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories
— licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one
replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Compare Magic Wormhole with
choose an app… Immich Syncthing LocalSend MinIO Rclone copyparty Puter PhotoPrism croc Spacedrive Nextcloud File Browser SeaweedFS Cloudreve Ente Photos DeepFace Snapdrop gallery-dl Kubo (IPFS) Ceph transfer.sh ProjectSend alt: Vert.sh File converter Seafile Duplicati Stalwart Kopia Color Thief BorgBackup darktable SFTPGo PairDrop ShareDrop Dufs Thumbor qrcp Nextcloud All-in-One Velero FilePizza LibrePhotos bup Backrest Resilio Sync alternative Onionshare Photoview imaginary Send Google Photos Takeout Helper Duplicacy Flying Carpet CKAN Pingvin Share pgBackRest bitmagnet Updog PicoShare Gokapi ProjectSend PsiTransfer Plik Linx rustypaste XBackBone Pomf Lufi Filebin Kleeja
Compare Restic with
choose an app… Syncthing LocalSend MinIO Rclone copyparty Puter croc Spacedrive Nextcloud File Browser SeaweedFS Cloudreve Duplicati Kopia BorgBackup Velero bup Backrest Duplicacy CKAN pgBackRest bitmagnet Timeshift WAL-G Docker Volume Backup Sanoid rsnapshot Backup wrapper nono Backup-rsync-time-backup Barman mydumper Rustic Back In Time pgBackWeb SnapRAID Vorta Open Archiver Wayback btrbk mail-archiver Backup tool nono Plakar borgmatic Autorestic BackupPC MySQL backup XtraBackup Restic REST Server Gickup Stash by AppsCode Restic alt MiniBackup Restic Browser rdiff-backup Bareos ElkarBackup alt Snapper zrepl K8up Ganymede Bupstash UrBackup Kanister linux-timemachine ZFS Autobackup MySQL Backup Container Restic Cron ZnapZend Restic Mailer BorgWarehouse Deja Dup Burp Backblaze alt Kopia-UI Standalone Knoxite ArchivesSpace ElkarBackup Collective Access - Providence Duplicacy alt MailpileBackup nono pgmoneta Duplicity Conserve Backup Backblaze alt nono Nxs-backup Amanda Tarsnap GUI Minarca Backup DAR Obnam2 Rdiffweb Restic Exporter Kup Minarca BackupNinja Time Machine Eonvelope Yuno Archive Custom Backup Sosse HashBackup
Feature Magic Wormhole Restic Category File Sync & Storage Backup & Recovery License MIT BSD-2-Clause Language Python Go Setup difficulty Easy Medium Min. RAM 32 MB 256 MB Deployment binary binary, docker GitHub stars ★ 22,792 ★ 35,412 First released 2016 2015 Replaces WeTransfer, AirDrop Backblaze, Carbonite
Why pick each one
Choose Magic Wormhole if… Released under the MIT license Easy to set up — beginner-friendly Mature project with 22.8k GitHub stars Written in Python Magic Wormhole details Choose Restic if… Strong encryption Efficient deduplication Wide backend support Restic details
Frequently asked questions Is Magic Wormhole or Restic better? Neither is universally better. Restic has the larger community, while Magic Wormhole is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Magic Wormhole and Restic free and open-source? Yes. Magic Wormhole is licensed under MIT and Restic under BSD-2-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Magic Wormhole and Restic with Docker? Magic Wormhole: check the project docs for container support. Restic: yes.