Open-source Veeam alternatives

Restic is a backup program designed to be fast, efficient and secure. It runs on Linux, macOS and Windows, with support for FreeBSD and OpenBSD, and ships as a single command-line tool written in Go. It is released under the BSD-2-Clause license, and the project keeps documentation and a Discourse forum for questions.

Backups are stored in a repository that you create with an init command and protect with a password, and the README warns that losing the password means losing the data. Each run saves a snapshot, and deduplication keeps repeated data from using extra space. Files can be restored with a restore command, or the repository can be mounted through FUSE so past snapshots can be browsed. Restic can store backups in a local directory, over SFTP, on an HTTP REST server, in Amazon S3 or S3-compatible storage, OpenStack Swift, Backblaze B2, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage, or through rclone.

Duplicati is a free, open-source backup client that securely stores encrypted, incremental and compressed backups on cloud storage services and remote file servers. According to its README it is licensed under the MIT license and available for Windows, macOS and Linux, and it is written in C#.

Data is encrypted with AES-256 or GNU Privacy Guard before it is uploaded. Only the first backup is a full copy, and later backups are differential to save bandwidth and storage. A built-in scheduler keeps backups current, and an integrated updater announces new releases. Supported destinations include Amazon S3, Backblaze B2, Box, Dropbox, FTP, Google Cloud and Drive, MEGA, Microsoft Azure and OneDrive, Storj, SFTP, WebDAV and others.

Releases are GPG-signed, and the project offers a forum, an online manual and several update channels from stable to more experimental builds. Because the backup client runs on your own machines and sends data to storage you choose, it suits individuals and small teams who want client-side encrypted backups without a vendor-hosted service.

Kopia is an open-source backup and restore tool that creates encrypted snapshots of selected files and directories. It does not image a whole machine; instead you choose the folders that matter and Kopia stores the snapshots in the location you pick, whether that is cloud storage, a network server or a local disk.

Compression, deduplication, error correction and end-to-end encryption controlled by the user are built in, so repeated backups stay small and the storage provider never sees readable data. Supported destinations include Amazon S3 and S3-compatible services, Azure Blob Storage, Backblaze B2, Google Cloud Storage, WebDAV, SFTP and, experimentally, a subset of Rclone backends.

Both a command-line interface and a graphical interface are included, so the tool suits advanced users and people who prefer a GUI. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, is written in Go and is licensed under Apache-2.0. The project site offers installation instructions and a step-by-step getting started guide.

BorgBackup, usually called Borg, is a backup program that stores files as content-defined chunks. Identical chunks are kept only once across files, machines and years of history, so a daily full backup costs little more than the changes made since the previous run. This makes long retention periods practical on modest storage.

Repositories are protected with authenticated AES encryption, which means a backup server only ever sees ciphertext and does not need to be trusted. Compression is configurable, with options such as lz4 for speed, zstd as a balance and zlib or lzma for smaller output. Archives can be mounted as an ordinary filesystem through FUSE so earlier versions of files can be browsed like folders.

Borg is written in Python, has been developed since 2015, and is free software under a BSD license. It installs on Linux, macOS, BSD and other systems from distribution packages, single-file binaries or pip. The project site provides a demo, documentation, a community page and commercial support services.

Velero, formerly Heptio Ark, gives Kubernetes administrators tools to back up and restore cluster resources and persistent volumes. It works with public cloud platforms as well as on-premises clusters, and helps teams recover from data loss or a failed cluster without rebuilding everything by hand.

Besides disaster recovery, Velero can migrate cluster resources to other clusters and replicate a production cluster into development and testing clusters. It consists of two parts: a server that runs inside the cluster and a command-line client that runs on your own machine. Documentation includes a getting started guide, architecture notes and instructions for extending the tool.

The project is written in Go and released under the Apache-2.0 license. Support is available through troubleshooting docs, GitHub issues and the velero-users and velero-dev channels on the Kubernetes Slack, and bi-weekly community meetings alternate between time zones friendly to Asia and to the US and Europe.

Backrest is a backup tool you reach through a web browser, built on restic. Its web interface wraps the restic command-line tool so you can create repositories, browse snapshots and restore files, and it can run in the background to schedule snapshots and orchestrate repository health tasks.

It supports importing existing restic repositories and cron-scheduled backups and maintenance such as prune, check and forget. Notifications can be sent through Discord, Slack, Shoutrrr, Gotify or Healthchecks, and pre and post backup hooks can run shell scripts. All restic storage backends are supported, including S3, B2, Azure, GCS, local and SFTP, along with rclone remotes. The interface can be reached locally or remotely, which suits NAS deployments, and the restic CLI remains available for advanced operations.

Backrest is written in Go with a TypeScript interface, licensed under GPL-3.0 and distributed as a standalone binary whose only dependency is restic, downloaded on first run. It runs on Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD and Docker.

Zerobyte is a backup automation tool for self-hosters, built on top of Restic. It adds a web interface for scheduling, managing and monitoring encrypted backups of remote storage, so Restic's capabilities can be used without hand-writing scripts and cron jobs.

Backups are encrypted, compressed and kept according to retention policies, with flexible scheduling for automated jobs and fine-grained retention rules. Data can be backed up from several protocols, including NFS, SMB, WebDAV, SFTP and local directories. The README says the full documentation, with setup guides and configuration reference, is on zerobyte.app.

Zerobyte runs with Docker and Docker Compose using the provided compose file. It is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and still at version 0.x, so the authors warn of major changes between versions. They also advise against exposing it directly to the internet, recommending a localhost port mapping with a secure tunnel, and against pointing its data directory to a network share.

Bareos is backup and recovery software for mixed IT environments. It helps organizations back up, restore and manage data across networks, operating systems, storage targets and workloads. The project is licensed under AGPLv3, and the README says it follows an open-source approach without open-core restrictions. Supported systems include Linux, Windows, FreeBSD and macOS.

The architecture is designed for many clients, storage daemons and backup targets across a network. Backups can go to disk, tape or S3-compatible object storage, in a format that suits deduplicating filesystems such as ZFS, VDO and btrfs, and a tool called bdedupestimate helps estimate the benefit. Always Incremental backups are available for file-based data, and a catalog with the WebUI helps teams find and restore the right data.

Administration is scriptable through bconsole and command-line tools, with the Bareos WebUI as a graphical alternative. Role-based ACLs control commands and objects, and encryption covers communication and backups. Plugins extend support to virtual environments, databases and specialized workloads, including VMware vSphere, Hyper-V and Proxmox. It is written in C++ and Python.