head to head · open source
restic vs Pluton
restic has 36,523 GitHub stars, 1,918 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pluton has 849 stars, 36 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. restic leads on adoption by 4,202% (36,523 vs 849 stars). restic is written in Go under BSD-2-Clause; Pluton is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. restic has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Pluton 4%. restic was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (backup, restic), 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 | Pluton | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 849 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-11 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 36 |
| 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 Pluton if
- You want the Pluton feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Pluton fits your workflow better
About restic
restic is a fast, secure, efficient backup program written in Go for Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD and OpenBSD users who want verifiable, encrypted backups stored to a backend of their choosing.
read the full restic overview →
About Pluton
Pluton is an Apache 2.0 licensed, self hosted backup management platform written in TypeScript. It lives in the backup and recovery ecosystem, and it uses Restic for encrypted incremental backups and Rclone for cloud storage connectivity. The project provides a web interface for creating, scheduling, monitoring, and restoring backup jobs across local and remote storage destinations.
read the full Pluton overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is restic or Pluton more popular?
restic has 36,523 GitHub stars and Pluton has 849. restic has the larger community by that measure.
Are restic and Pluton free?
Both are open source. restic is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Pluton under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between restic and Pluton?
restic is written in Go and Pluton in TypeScript. 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 Pluton?
Choose restic if you want the larger community (36,523 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose Pluton if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.