Rclone 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?
FeatureRcloneRustic
CategoryBackup & RecoveryBackup & Recovery
LicenseMITApache-2.0
LanguageGoRust
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM128 MB128 MB
Deploymentbinary, dockerbinary
GitHub stars★ 58,995★ 3,170
First released20142022
ReplacesBackblazeBackblaze, CrashPlan

Why pick each one

Choose Rclone if…

  • Works with almost any cloud
  • Extremely versatile
  • Reliable
Rclone 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 Rclone or Rustic 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 Rustic free and open-source?

Yes. Rclone is licensed under MIT and Rustic under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Rclone and Rustic with Docker?

Rclone: yes. Rustic: check the project docs for container support.

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