Restic is a backup & SaaS data protection tool for Developers, offered as open source. Founded in Germany in 2014.
About Restic
restic is a free, open-source command-line backup program written in Go and released under the BSD 2-Clause license. It started as a personal project of Alexander Neumann and has become one of the most trusted backup tools among system administrators, developers and self-hosters.
restic stores backups as encrypted, deduplicated, content-addressed snapshots, so after the first run only changed data is uploaded and every snapshot behaves like a full backup. Repositories can live on a local disk, SFTP, a REST server, Amazon S3 and S3-compatible storage, Backblaze B2, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage, OpenStack Swift, or any of the dozens of backends supported through rclone. Compression is supported in newer repository formats, the check command verifies integrity, forget and prune apply retention policies, and snapshots can be browsed by mounting them as a filesystem. Binaries are available for Linux, macOS, Windows and BSD.
restic fits people who are comfortable with the terminal and want fast, secure backups for servers, laptops and NAS devices. It has no built-in scheduler or graphical interface, so you combine it with cron, systemd timers or community wrappers such as resticprofile, autorestic or Backrest. BorgBackup is the closest alternative with excellent compression but fewer native cloud backends, Kopia offers a similar design with an official GUI, and Duplicati or commercial tools are friendlier for non-technical users.
Key features of Restic
- Encrypted, deduplicated snapshots
- Many backends via rclone
- Fast incremental backups
- Snapshot browsing and restore
- Verification checks
- Cross-platform CLI
Pros and cons
Pros
- Fast and reliable
- Strong security design
- Free
- Scriptable
Cons
- CLI only
- Requires scripting for scheduling
- No GUI
- Learning curve
Restic pricing
Restic uses a open source model.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Open source | $0 | BSD 2-Clause license |
Source: restic.net · checked on Oct 20, 2026
How Restic compares in Backup & SaaS data protection
- Rank by votes
- #1 / 16
- Starting price
- $0
- Free alternatives
- 2
0 votes from members
Category median is $5/mo
Free or open-source tools in Backup & SaaS data protection
Restic ranks #1 of 16 backup & saas data protection tools by community votes and is not directly comparable on price.
Common use cases
- 1Server backups to B2
- 2Developer laptop backups
- 3Kubernetes volume backups (via tools)
- 4Offsite encrypted archives
Best for
Sysadmins and developers comfortable with CLI.
Not ideal for
Non-technical users.
Integrations
- S3
- Backblaze B2
- Azure Blob
- Google Cloud Storage
- SFTP
- rclone backends
Our take
Restic is the sysadmin's favorite backup tool.
FAQ
- What is Restic?
- Restic is a Backup & SaaS data protection tool: Fast, secure command-line backup.
- How much does Restic cost?
- Restic is Open source; there is no mandatory paid plan.
- What does Restic integrate with?
- Restic integrates with S3, Backblaze B2, Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage, SFTP, rclone backends and more.
- Which platforms does Restic support?
- Restic is available on macos, windows, linux.
- Who is Restic for?
- Sysadmins and developers comfortable with CLI.
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