# Alternatives to Restic

Fast deduplicated CLI backup.

Restic ranks #4 of 12 in Backup software, with an Alt Score of 96. It is licensed under BSD-2-Clause, free and available on Windows, macOS and Linux. 10 of 10 checklist rows are verified against a public source.

Source: https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/restic/
Category: Backup software

## Where Restic stands out

- **Open source** — 5 of 12 apps with a verified answer have this

## Overview

- **Who it's for**: Developers, sysadmins, and technically comfortable individuals who back up servers, workstations, or NAS devices from the command line and want strong encryption without running dedicated backup infrastructure.
- **What you get**: A single self-contained binary that creates encrypted, deduplicated snapshots of files and directories. Only changed data is transferred and stored, keeping backups fast and space-efficient. It supports many storage backends, including local disks, SFTP, and cloud/object storage like S3, Backblaze B2, and Azure. Built-in integrity checks let you verify a repository and its snapshots before you actually need to restore.
- **How it works**: You initialize an encrypted repository on a chosen backend, then run `restic backup` on target directories to create a snapshot; repeated backups only add changed data. Snapshots can be listed, mounted as a browsable filesystem, or restored in full or in part with `restic restore`, and old snapshots can be pruned according to a retention policy.

## Profile

- **License**: BSD-2-Clause (verified 2026-07-11)
- **Pricing model**: Free (verified 2026-07-11)
- **Starts at**: ?
- **Platforms**: Windows, macOS, Linux
- **Status**: active (verified 2026-07-11)

## Ranked alternatives

| # | App | Alt Score | Licence | Platforms |
|---|-----|-----------|---------|-----------|
| 1 | [Duplicati](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/duplicati.md) | 100 | MIT | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| 2 | [Kopia](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/kopia.md) | 100 | Apache-2.0 | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| 3 | [Duplicacy](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/duplicacy.md) | 96 | Proprietary | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| 4 | [Arq](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/arq.md) | 91 | Proprietary | Windows, macOS |
| 5 | [Vorta](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/vorta.md) | 86 | GPL-3.0 | macOS, Linux |
| 6 | [IDrive](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/idrive.md) | 82 | Proprietary | Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS |
| 7 | [SpiderOak](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/spideroak.md) | 82 | Proprietary | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| 8 | [UrBackup](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/urbackup.md) | 82 | AGPL-3.0 | Windows, macOS, Linux |
| 9 | [Backblaze](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/backblaze.md) | 64 | Proprietary | Windows, macOS |
| 10 | [Carbonite](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/carbonite.md) | 42 | Proprietary | Windows, macOS |
| 11 | [Acronis](https://altcatalog.com/alternatives/acronis.md) | 37 | Proprietary | Windows, macOS, iOS, Android |

Alt Score = Verified coverage (90%) + Visibility (10%). See https://altcatalog.com/how-alt-score-works/

## Feature comparison

Legend: Yes / No / Partial / ? (not verified).

| Backup software checklist | Restic | Duplicati | Kopia | Duplicacy | Arq | Vorta |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Free | OSS + paid hosting | Free | Subscription | One-time | Free |
| Starts at | ? | $2/machine/month | ? | $20/year | $49.99 one-time (per computer) | ? |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT | Apache-2.0 | Proprietary | Proprietary | GPL-3.0 |
| Platforms | Windows, macOS, Linux | Windows, macOS, Linux | Windows, macOS, Linux | Windows, macOS, Linux | Windows, macOS | macOS, Linux |
| Incremental backups | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | ? |
| E2E encryption | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Deduplication | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Cloud targets supported | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial |
| Local / NAS targets | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Scheduling | Partial | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Versioning & retention policies | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Restore granularity | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | Yes | Yes | Partial | No | Yes |
| Compression | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |

## Sources

Sources for Restic. Each alternative is sourced on its own page.

- **License**: BSD-2-Clause — <https://github.com/restic/restic/blob/master/LICENSE> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “BSD 2-Clause License”
- **Pricing model**: Free — <https://github.com/restic/restic#license> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “Restic is licensed under [BSD 2-Clause License](https://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause).”
- **Platforms**: Windows, macOS, Linux — <https://github.com/restic/restic#introduction> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “It supports the three major operating systems (Linux, macOS, Windows) and a few smaller ones (FreeBSD, OpenBSD).”
- **Status**: active — <https://github.com/restic/restic/releases> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “Changelog for restic 0.19.1 (2026-07-05)”
- **Incremental backups**: Yes — <https://github.com/restic/restic#design-principles> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “With the growth of data, additional snapshots should only take the storage of the actual increment.”
- **E2E encryption**: Yes — <https://github.com/restic/restic/blob/master/doc/design.rst> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “All data stored by restic in the repository is encrypted with AES-256 in counter mode and authenticated using Poly1305-AES.”
- **Deduplication**: Yes — <https://github.com/restic/restic#design-principles> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “duplicate data should be de-duplicated before it is actually written to the storage back end to save precious backup space.”
- **Cloud targets supported**: Yes — <https://github.com/restic/restic#backends> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “Amazon S3 (either from Amazon or using the Minio server)”
- **Local / NAS targets**: Yes — <https://github.com/restic/restic#backends> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “Local directory”
- **Scheduling**: Partial — <https://github.com/restic/restic/blob/master/doc/040_backup.rst> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “Restic does not have a built-in way of scheduling backups, as it's a tool that runs when executed rather than a daemon.”
- **Versioning & retention policies**: Yes — <https://github.com/restic/restic/blob/master/doc/060_forget.rst> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “restic allows specifying a policy (one or more ``--keep-*`` options) for which snapshots to keep.”
- **Restore granularity**: Yes — <https://github.com/restic/restic/blob/master/doc/050_restore.rst> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “Use either --exclude or --include to restrict the restore to a subset of files in the snapshot.”
- **Open source**: Yes — <https://github.com/restic/restic/blob/master/LICENSE> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “BSD 2-Clause License”
- **Compression**: Yes — <https://github.com/restic/restic/blob/master/doc/design.rst> (verified 2026-07-11)
  - Quote: “Data and tree blobs may be compressed with the zstandard compression algorithm.”

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Ranked by verified data, never by who paid. https://altcatalog.com/trust/