Duplicati
Depends
Confidence: Medium
Buy it if you're technical and want free, encrypted backups to your own cloud storage.
Comparison
Duplicati vs restic
Duplicati and restic both land on Depends.
restic
Depends
Confidence: Medium
Use it if you're technical and want free, encrypted, deduplicated backups to any storage backend.
| Compare | Duplicati | restic |
|---|---|---|
| Verdict | Depends | Depends |
| Best for | Homelab and self-hosting users | Self-hosters and homelab admins |
| Who it's not for | Businesses needing vendor SLAs or support contracts | Non-technical users wanting point-and-click backups |
| Privacy | Client-side AES-256 encryption by design, but 2026 CVEs (privilege escalation, permission issues) require prompt patching.11 | No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed. |
| Support quality | Community forum only; no vendor SLA | Community forum only, no vendor |
| Public sentiment | Users praise the free, powerful encrypted backups while repeatedly complaining about reliability and trust issues.⁹ | Homelab and developer communities widely praise restic's encryption and snapshot model, with GUI polish the recurring complaint.16 |
| Biggest gotcha | Restores matter most; Reddit reports of failures mean you must test restores regularly⁸ | No vendor support; the community forum is your helpdesk |
Pick Duplicati when
- Homelab and self-hosting users
- Personal PC backup to cloud storage
- Zero-knowledge encrypted backups on a budget
- Technical users comfortable troubleshooting
When Duplicati is not a fit
- Businesses needing vendor SLAs or support contracts
- Non-technical users who won't verify restores
- Compliance-driven orgs needing audited security
- Anyone wanting paid, on-call vendor support
Pick restic when
- Self-hosters and homelab admins
- Developers scripting server backups
- Kubernetes data protection
- Encrypted backups to S3/cloud
When restic is not a fit
- Non-technical users wanting point-and-click backups
- Teams needing vendor SLA support contracts
- Anyone unwilling to maintain backup scripts
- Windows users wanting a polished restore GUI
Sources
- Duplicati official siteduplicati.comofficial
- Duplicati pricing plansduplicati.comofficial
- duplicati/duplicati on GitHubgithub.comofficial
- ITPro: Our new favourite backup toolitpro.comreview
- Cloudwards Duplicati Review 2026cloudwards.netreview
- Backblaze: Deduped, Compressed, Encrypted Backupsbackblaze.comreview
- XDA Developers: I should have started soonerxda-developers.comreview
review
- Reddit: Is duplicati still bad?reddit.comreview
- CERT VU#847406kb.cert.orgsecurity
- CVE-2026-16157 privilege escalationsentinelone.comsecurity
- CVE-2026-76159 permission issuerapid7.comsecurity
- Open Core Ventures: Duplicati Inc launchopencoreventures.comnews
- Forum: Had high hopes but wound up uninstallingforum.duplicati.comreview
- restic · Backups done right! (official)restic.netofficial
- Restic: Backups done right . Hacker Newsnews.ycombinator.comreview