head to head · open source
restic vs Plakar
restic has 36,958 GitHub stars, 1,950 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Plakar has 2,103 stars, 103 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped yesterday. restic leads on adoption by 1,657% (36,958 vs 2,103 stars). restic is written in Go under BSD-2-Clause; Plakar is written in Go under ISC. restic has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Plakar 5%. Plakar was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (deduplication), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| restic | Plakar | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | ISC |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 103 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick restic if
- You weight community size — 37K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Plakar if
- You want the Plakar feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the ISC license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Plakar fits your workflow better
About restic
Introduction restic is a backup program that is fast, efficient and secure. It supports the three major operating systems (Linux, macOS, Windows) and a few smaller ones (FreeBSD, OpenBSD). For detailed usage and installation instructions check out the documentation. You can ask questions in our Discourse forum. Quick start Once you've installed restic, start off with creating a repository for your backups: $ restic init repo /tmp/backup enter password for new backend: enter password again: created restic backend 085b3c76b9 at /tmp/backup Please note that knowledge of your password is required to access the…
read the full restic overview →
About Plakar
Plakar: open source backup engine Encrypted, deduplicated, verifiable, and scalable. Back up anything, store anywhere, restore everywhere, with zero trust encryption and no vendor lock in. Deutsch Español français 日本語 한국어 Português Русский 中文 What is Plakar? Plakar is an open source backup solution powered by Kloset and ptar. It creates snapshots of your data, stores them in an encrypted and deduplicated store, and lets you inspect, verify, and restore them later. Plakar stores backups in a Kloset, an open source, immutable data store that enables the implementation of advanced data protection scenarios. Through…
read the full Plakar overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is restic or Plakar more popular?
restic has 36,958 GitHub stars and Plakar has 2,103. restic has the larger community by that measure.
Are restic and Plakar free?
Both are open source. restic is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Plakar under ISC. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between restic and Plakar?
restic is written in Go and Plakar in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, restic or Plakar?
Choose restic if you want the larger community (36,958 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose Plakar if its feature set, stack or ISC licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.