Backup

Restic36.1k★

Restic encrypts and deduplicates your backups, then stores them wherever you want: S3, Backblaze B2, SFTP, Azure, Google Cloud, you name it. Set it up once, run it on a cron, and your backups just work. BSD license, written in Go. Single binary, cross-platform. Every backup is encrypted client-side by default; even if your storage is compromised, the data is useless without your key. Deduplication means only changed blocks get uploaded, so incremental backups are fast and storage-efficient. Fully free. No paid tier, no hosted version. Your only cost is whatever storage backend you choose, and with Backblaze B2 at $6.95/TB/month, backing up 500 GB costs about $3.50/mo. Solo users: install, point at a storage backend, add to cron. Done. Teams: Restic handles the backup side; you still need to think about restore testing and monitoring. Works at every scale. The catch: Restic is a backup tool, not a backup solution. No built-in scheduling, no web dashboard, no alerting when backups fail. You pair it with cron (or systemd timers) and something like Healthchecks.io for monitoring. BorgBackup is the main alternative: slightly better compression, slightly worse cloud storage support. If you want a GUI or managed experience, Restic isn't it.

Duplicati15.0k★

Duplicati backs up your files to any cloud storage (S3, Backblaze B2, Google Drive, OneDrive, SFTP) with encryption, compression, and scheduling through a web UI. It's a set-and-forget backup tool that encrypts everything before it leaves your machine. C#. AES-256 encryption by default, block-level deduplication (only uploads changed chunks), compression, and retention policies. The web UI lets you configure backup jobs, monitor progress, and restore files without touching the command line. Fully free. No paid tier, no premium features. Every backend, every encryption option, every scheduling feature: $0. You pay your cloud storage provider, not Duplicati. Solo: set up a backup to Backblaze B2 or Google Drive in 15 minutes. Protects your data for the cost of storage ($0.005/GB on B2). Small teams: works for backing up shared servers. The web UI makes it manageable without sysadmin expertise. Medium and up: Duplicati works but enterprise backup solutions (Veeam, Restic + orchestration) offer better fleet management and reporting. The catch: the project has had long periods between stable releases. The 2.x line was in beta for years. Performance with very large backup sets (10TB+) can be slow, and the database that tracks file states occasionally corrupts, requiring repair operations. For critical business backups, pair it with monitoring to catch silent failures.

BorgBackup13.8k★

BorgBackup is a deduplicating backup tool for the command line. It deduplicates, meaning if you back up 100GB and only 2GB changed since yesterday, it only stores the 2GB. Over time, that saves enormous amounts of storage. Borg also encrypts by default. Your backups are unreadable without your key. Compression is built in (LZ4, zstd, LZMA). It's been around since 2015, battle-tested, and trusted by sysadmins who don't trust much. Completely free. No paid tier, no cloud service, no strings. You point it at a local drive, a remote server via SSH, or a service like BorgBase ($2/mo for 10GB) or rsync.net ($0.015/GB/mo with Borg support). The catch: Borg is CLI-only. No GUI, no web dashboard. Want scheduled backups? You write a cron job or use Borgmatic (a wrapper that handles scheduling and config). The learning curve is real. The first backup setup takes an hour of reading docs. After that, it just works. Also, Borg 2.0 has been in beta for a long time. If that bothers you, Restic is the modern alternative with a similar approach but more active development.

zerobyte7.0k★

Zerobyte puts a web dashboard on top of Restic, the encrypted, deduplicating backup engine a lot of self-hosters already trust. You pick a source, pick a destination, set a schedule and retention rules, and it runs the jobs and tells you when one fails. AGPL-3.0, free, no paid tier. Setup is one Docker Compose file. Sources can be local folders or NFS, SMB, WebDAV and SFTP shares. Destinations cover local disk, S3-compatible storage, Google Cloud Storage, Azure, and 40+ more through rclone. Mounting remote shares means granting the container SYS_ADMIN and FUSE access, which is a real privilege. Back up only local folders and you can drop both. Homelab and small-team operators tired of cron scripts and silent failures should try it. Restores happen from the UI, alerts go to Slack, Discord, ntfy or email, and OIDC single sign-on is built in. Compare it with Backrest, which does the same Restic-with-a-UI job, and Duplicati if you want a longer track record. The catch is maturity. It is still 0.x and the README warns of major changes between versions. It also tells you not to expose it to the internet, and every org member can operate every repository. Backup software is the last place you want surprises.