best-of ranking · updated nightly

Best Open Source Backup & Recovery Tools

Ranked by GitHub stars — actual adoption, not editorial taste. All 3 are free, open source and self-hostable; license and last activity on every entry.

1

restic ★ 37K

Fast, secure, efficient backup program

BSD-2-Clause Go pushed 2026-11-01 details →
2

Plakar ★ 2.1K

Encrypted, queryable backups for engineers who value time

ISC Go pushed 2026-11-02 details →
3

Pluton ★ 871

Self-hosted encrypted backups with 70+ cloud storage options

Apache-2.0 TypeScript pushed 2026-11-02 details →

method stars desc · snapshot from github api refresh nightly related Search Engines, Server & VM Management, Cloud Infrastructure Management, Monitoring & Observability, Storage Solutions, Orchestration & Scheduling

Related best-of lists

best Search Engines →best Server & VM Management →best Cloud Infrastructure Management →best Monitoring & Observability →best Storage Solutions →best Orchestration & Scheduling →

last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked

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Frequently asked questions

What is the best open source Backup & Recovery tool in 2026?

restic leads the ranking with 36,958 GitHub stars, ahead of Plakar. Rankings use live GitHub star counts, refreshed nightly.

How is this list of Backup & Recovery tools ranked?

By GitHub stars — a proxy for adoption and community size. Each entry also shows its licence, primary language and last commit date, so you can judge maintenance activity rather than trusting the ranking alone.

Are the best Backup & Recovery tools free?

Every project on this list is open source and free to self-host. Some also offer paid managed hosting, but the software itself carries no licence fee.