pgmoneta vs zrepl
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted backup & recovery options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | pgmoneta | zrepl |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 75 · Good | 70 · Good |
| Category | Backup & Recovery | Backup & Recovery |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Language | C | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, binary | binary, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 317 | ★ 1,159 |
| First released | 2021 | 2017 |
| Replaces | Veeam | Veeam |
What are pgmoneta and zrepl?
pgmoneta
pgmoneta is a backup and restore solution for PostgreSQL that focuses on efficiency and modern features. It supports incremental backups, compression, and encryption with minimal overhead.
- Incremental PostgreSQL backups
- Built-in compression
- Low-overhead design
zrepl
zrepl is a one-stop solution for automated ZFS snapshot management and replication. It handles taking snapshots, pruning them per policy, and replicating datasets between machines with a simple daemon and configuration.
- Automatic ZFS snapshots
- Push and pull replication
- Flexible pruning policies
- Single daemon
pgmoneta vs zrepl: key differences
Pgmoneta is written in C, while zrepl is built with Go. Licensing differs — BSD-3-Clause for pgmoneta versus MIT for zrepl. Zrepl is the more established project (first released 2017), while pgmoneta arrived in 2021. Zrepl has the considerably larger community, at 1,159 GitHub stars versus 317.
Why pick each one
Choose pgmoneta if…
- Released under the BSD-3-Clause license
- Written in C
- Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Choose zrepl if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Active community (1.2k GitHub stars)
- Written in Go
- Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Watch out for
- ZFS required
- YAML configuration
Frequently asked questions
Is pgmoneta or zrepl better?
zrepl is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider pgmoneta if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are pgmoneta and zrepl free and open-source?
Yes. pgmoneta is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and zrepl under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run pgmoneta and zrepl with Docker?
pgmoneta: check the project docs for container support. zrepl: check the project docs for container support.