Rclone vs Restic
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?
Compare Rclone with
choose an app… Syncthing LocalSend MinIO copyparty Puter croc Spacedrive Nextcloud File Browser SeaweedFS Cloudreve Magic Wormhole 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
Compare Restic with
choose an app… Syncthing LocalSend MinIO copyparty Puter croc Spacedrive Nextcloud File Browser SeaweedFS Cloudreve Magic Wormhole 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 Rclone Restic Category Backup & Recovery Backup & Recovery License MIT BSD-2-Clause Language Go Go Setup difficulty Medium Medium Min. RAM 128 MB 256 MB Deployment binary, docker binary, docker GitHub stars ★ 58,995 ★ 35,412 First released 2014 2015 Replaces Backblaze Backblaze, Carbonite
Why pick each one
Choose Rclone if… Works with almost any cloud Extremely versatile Reliable Rclone details Choose Restic if… Strong encryption Efficient deduplication Wide backend support Restic details
Frequently asked questions Is Rclone or Restic better? Neither is universally better. Rclone has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Rclone and Restic free and open-source? Yes. Rclone is licensed under MIT and Restic under BSD-2-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Rclone and Restic with Docker? Rclone: yes. Restic: yes.