15 Essential Open-Source Backup Utilities to Protect Your Data

Protecting your data has never been more crucial. With the advent of hybrid work, cloud-native applications, and ransomware threats, reliable backup solutions are indispensable for individuals and organizations alike. Open-source tools have emerged as leaders in this domain, offering transparency, flexibility, and community-driven innovation. In this article, I will present a list of fifteen open-source backup solutions that can be utilized to keep your work safe, secure and backed up.

BorgBackup – It is a deduplicating backup solution that features compression and encryption. It is supported on Linux, MacOS, and BSD and has a BSD License. The project has excellent documentation.

Restic –  backup program that is fast, efficient and secure. It supports the three major operating systems. It has a 2-Clause BSD license. Its code is available on Github. The proejct has excellent documentation. You can follow the project on Fosstodon.

Rclone – According to their website, “Rclone is a command-line program to manage files on cloud storage. It is a feature-rich alternative to cloud vendors’ web storage interfaces. Over 70 cloud storage products support rclone including S3 object stores, business & consumer file storage services, as well as standard transfer protocols. Rclone has an MIT license. RClone support Linux, macOS and Windows. It is easy to download and install. The project has great documentation.

urBackup – It does full and incremental image and file backups; you can save whole partitions or single directories. It has clients for Windows, Linux, and MacOS and has a GNU Affero Public License. The project maintains good documentation.

Duplicati – is a free backup solution that works on Windows, MacOS, and Linux and a variety of standard protocols, such as FTP, SSH, and WebDAV, and cloud services. It features strong encryption and has an MIT license.

Amanda – is a backup system written in C and Perl that allows a system administrator to back up an entire network of client machines to a single server using tape, disk, or cloud-based systems. It was developed and copyrighted in 1991 at the University of Maryland and has a BSD-style license.

Bacula – Their website says, “Bacula is a set of Open Source, computer programs that permit you (or the system administrator) to manage backup, recovery, and verification of computer data across a network of computers of different kinds. Bacula has a AGPLv3 license.

BackupPC – “is a high-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up Linux, Windows, and MacOS PCs and laptops to a server’s disk,” according to its website. It is licensed under the GPLv3.

Timeshift – is a backup utility for Linux that is similar to System Restore for Windows and Time Capsule for MacOS. According to its GitHub repository, “Timeshift protects your system by taking incremental snapshots of the file system at regular intervals. These snapshots can be restored at a later date to undo all changes to the system.”

Syncthing -synchronizes files between two computers. It is licensed with the Mozilla Public License and, according to its website, is secure and private. It works on MacOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, and OpenBSD. It is easy to download. The project provides good documentation.

Back In Time – is a simple backup utility designed for Linux. It provides a command line client and a GUI, both written in Python. To do a backup, just specify where to store snapshots, what folders to back up, and the frequency of the backups. BackInTime is licensed with GPLv2.

Cronopete – A Time Machine like backup for Linux. The project provides packages for ‘rpm’ and ‘deb’ based systems. You can choose to build it from source if you need a different solution. It has a GPL v3 license.

Kup – Is a backup scheduler for the Plasma desktop. According to the project website, “Kup is created for helping people to keep up-to-date backups of their personal files. Connecting a USB hard drive is the primary supported way to store files, but saving files to a server over a network connection is also possible for advanced users.”

Kopia – Has emerged as a powerful alternative to Borg, with a modern UI and cloud integrations. It is a versatile backup solution for Windows, macOS, and Linux that delivers fast incremental backups with built‑in compression, data deduplication, and secure end‑to‑end encryption. Available with both a command‑line interface and an easy‑to‑use graphical interface. It has an Apache 2.0 license.

DejaDup – Déjà Dup is a user‑friendly backup tool that takes the hassle out of doing backups the right way. It runs on top of Restic, giving you strong encryption, off‑site options, and reliable scheduling—all without the complexity. Using DejaDup you can backup your files to Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, network server or a local folder.

Whether you need a lightweight tool for personal files or a robust system to protect enterprise networks, the fifteen solutions highlighted here provide reliable options for every scenario. By adopting one of these tools, individuals and organizations alike can ensure their data remains secure, recoverable, and resilient against evolving challenges.