What is BorgBackup used for?

BorgBackup is a command-line backup program that deduplicates data, compresses it and encrypts it with authentication, built for efficient repeated backups. It is a good fit for space-efficient nightly server backups and backing up to an untrusted remote host.

Is BorgBackup open source?

Yes. BorgBackup is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at borgbackup/borg and is written mainly in Python.

Yes. BorgBackup is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.

What is BorgBackup an alternative to?

BorgBackup is an open-source alternative to Backblaze Computer Backup, CrashPlan, Carbonite and Degoo. Other open-source alternatives to Backblaze Computer Backup include Kopia, restic and Duplicati.

Is BorgBackup actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to BorgBackup was on 29 September 2026, and the latest release is 1.4.5, published on 18 July 2026. The project has 14k stars on GitHub.

BorgBackup: open-source file storage & sharing

About BorgBackup

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.

Key features

Content-defined chunking for deduplicated backups
Authenticated AES encryption of repositories
Selectable compression: lz4, zstd, zlib, lzma
Mount archives as a filesystem via FUSE
Installs on Linux, macOS and BSD
Backs up over SSH to remote servers

Good fit for

→Space-efficient nightly server backups
→Backing up to an untrusted remote host

Built with: Python
Tags: backup; deduplication; encryption; compression; cli; borgbackup; ssh

BorgBackup: questions and answers

What is BorgBackup used for?: BorgBackup is a command-line backup program that deduplicates data, compresses it and encrypts it with authentication, built for efficient repeated backups. It is a good fit for space-efficient nightly server backups and backing up to an untrusted remote host.
Is BorgBackup open source?: Yes. BorgBackup is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at borgbackup/borg and is written mainly in Python.
Is BorgBackup free?: Yes. BorgBackup is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.
What is BorgBackup an alternative to?: BorgBackup is an open-source alternative to Backblaze Computer Backup, CrashPlan, Carbonite and Degoo. Other open-source alternatives to Backblaze Computer Backup include Kopia, restic and Duplicati.
Is BorgBackup actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to BorgBackup was on 29 September 2026, and the latest release is 1.4.5, published on 18 July 2026. The project has 14k stars on GitHub.