Rclone
Depends
Confidence: High
If you're comfortable in a terminal and need flexible multi-cloud sync or migration, rclone is free and best-in-class.
Comparison
Rclone vs restic
Rclone 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 | Rclone | restic |
|---|---|---|
| Verdict | Depends | Depends |
| Best for | CLI-comfortable sysadmins and developers | Self-hosters and homelab admins |
| Who it's not for | Non-technical users wanting point-and-click | Non-technical users wanting point-and-click backups |
| Privacy | Actively maintained with a disclosure process, but multiple critical 2026 CVEs . patch fast and never expose the API unauthenticated.⁹ | No known public vulnerabilities found in the sources reviewed. |
| Support quality | Active free forum; paid support is separate | Community forum only, no vendor |
| Public sentiment | Power users call it indispensable and unbeatable for cloud sync, while less technical users find it bloated, confusing, or a reason to give up entirely.⁴ | Homelab and developer communities widely praise restic's encryption and snapshot model, with GUI polish the recurring complaint.15 |
| Biggest gotcha | Never expose rclone's API publicly . unauthenticated RCE CVEs appeared in 2026⁹ | No vendor support; the community forum is your helpdesk |
Pick Rclone when
- CLI-comfortable sysadmins and developers
- Multi-cloud backup and migration jobs
- Self-hosters scripting scheduled syncs
- Bulk moves into S3, Drive, Azure
When Rclone is not a fit
- Non-technical users wanting point-and-click
- Teams needing out-of-the-box GUI and SLAs
- Anyone unwilling to patch quickly . critical CVEs recur
- Set-and-forget consumer backup needs
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
- Rclone official siterclone.orgofficial
- rclone/rclone on GitHubgithub.comofficial
- Rclone Services (commercial support)rclone.comofficial
review
- An indispensable tool. THANK YOU!forum.rclone.orgreview
review
- Tom's Guide Rclone reviewtomsguide.comreview
security
- CVE-2026-49980 detailendorlabs.comsecurity
- Rclone Wars: rclone in ransomware attacksredcanary.comnews
- Rclone company profile (unfunded)tracxn.comnews
- restic · Backups done right! (official)restic.netofficial
- Restic: Backups done right . Hacker Newsnews.ycombinator.comreview
- Restic - Backups Done Right . Hacker Newsnews.ycombinator.comreview
review