Backblaze vs Duplicati

Backblaze is a publicly traded storage company from San Mateo, California, founded in 2007, that runs its own data centers and sells two products. Computer Backup continuously backs up an entire Mac or Windows PC, including attached external drives, for a flat monthly price with no data cap. B2 Cloud Storage is S3-compatible object storage priced per terabyte, positioned as a much cheaper alternative to Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage and Azure Blob Storage.

Computer Backup offers version history, restores through the web and the app, and the option to have data shipped on a USB drive. B2 includes free egress up to three times the data stored each month, free transfer through partners such as Cloudflare, object lock for immutable, ransomware-resistant backups, and integrations with tools like Veeam, Synology, QNAP, rclone and media asset managers. The first 10 GB of B2 storage is free, and billing beyond that is simple and predictable.

Backblaze suits individuals and creatives who want set-and-forget workstation backup, and developers or IT teams storing backups, media archives and app uploads cheaply. It is not a sync or collaboration tool like Dropbox, it offers far fewer regions and services than AWS, and very large Computer Backup restores can be slow. Against Wasabi it competes on egress terms and ecosystem, and against IDrive on simplicity. The company is also known for publishing quarterly hard drive reliability statistics from its own fleet.

Duplicati is a free, open-source backup client for Windows, macOS and Linux, started by developer Kenneth Skovhede and maintained with a community and, more recently, a company that sells central management. It creates encrypted, compressed and deduplicated backups and uploads them to almost any storage target, so you can keep an offsite copy without trusting the storage provider with readable data.

Backups are encrypted with AES-256 before upload, split into blocks and stored incrementally, so only changed data is sent after the first run. Supported destinations include S3-compatible storage, Backblaze B2, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, SFTP, WebDAV, local disks and network shares. Scheduling, versioned retention rules and a browser-based interface come in the free client, and the paid Duplicati Console adds centralized monitoring and management across many machines.

It suits home users, homelab owners and small offices that want encrypted cloud backups for the cost of storage only. It requires technical comfort: restoring large backup sets can be slow, the local database occasionally needs repair, and support is community-based unless you pay. Restic and Kopia are faster command-line alternatives, Arq is a polished paid option for Mac and Windows, and Backblaze Personal Backup is simpler for people who just want unlimited backup of one computer. Whatever you choose, test restores regularly.