Restic icon
Restic icon

Restic

 62 likes

restic is a program that does backups right. The design goals are: Easy, Fast, Verifiable, Secure, Efficient, Free.

Restic screenshot 1

License model

  • FreeOpen Source

Platforms

  • Mac
  • Windows
  • Linux
  • BSD
  • Arch Linux
  • FreeBSD
  • OpenBSD
4.7 / 5 Avg rating (9)
62 likes
7comments
0 news articles

Features

Suggest and vote on features

Properties

  1.  Lightweight

Features

  1.  Encrypted Backup
  2.  Data deduplication
  3.  Incremental Backup
  4.  Remote backup
  5.  Command line interface
  6.  Data Compression
  7.  Schedule Backup
  8.  Works Offline
  9.  File Sync
  10.  Portable
  11.  File Versioning
  12.  Ad-free

Restic News & Activities

Highlights All activities

Recent News

No news, maybe you know any news worth sharing?
Share a News Tip

Recent activities

  • wambo liked Restic
    15 days ago
  • vetu11 added File Versioning as a feature to Restic
    24 days ago
  • vetu11, 20250116071127, fridim and JimLegal liked Restic
    24 days ago
  • sittletwopalternativeto liked Restic
    5 months ago
  • App icon
    alternativetogo added Restic as alternative to VRangeSync
    6 months ago
  • Raphty and namdx1987 liked Restic
    7 months ago
Show all activities

Restic information

  • Developed by

    Alexander Neumann
  • Licensing

    Open Source (BSD-2-Clause) and Free product.
  • Written in

  • Rating

    Average rating of 4.7
  • Alternatives

    51 alternatives listed
  • Supported Languages

    • English

AlternativeTo Categories

Backup & SyncOS & Utilities

GitHub repository

  •  27,594 Stars
  •  1,585 Forks
  •  390 Open Issues
  •   Updated Feb 5, 2025 
View on GitHub

Our users have written 7 comments and reviews about Restic, and it has gotten 62 likes

Restic was added to AlternativeTo by wilfried18 on Mar 25, 2017 and this page was last updated Dec 17, 2021.

Comments and Reviews

   
 Post comment/review
Johxz
  
Top positive commentOct 23, 2020

Very secure backup. Works quite well and fast. I use it for local backup nothing fancy, Restic don't have GUI, only from the console, but is very easy to use. Basically you need 3 commands backup, snapshots (list backups) and forget/prune (delete) ok 4 commands, one more to restore :)

Super quick tutorial

Preparing a new repository, it create an encrypted backup folder in Restic. Here is were everything goes.

restic init --repo /d/backup-restic

1) Backing up

restic -r _REPOSITORY_ --verbose backup _MY-FILES_

restic -r /d/backup-restic --verbose backup /c/App/config/

2) Listing all snapshots

restic -r /d/backup-restic snapshots

3) Restoring from a snapshot

restic -r _REPOSITORY_ restore _SNAPSHOT-ID_ --target _WHERE-TO-RESTORE_

restic -r /d/backup-restic restore ef8e1d91 --target /d/books_restore

4) Remove a single snapshot

restic -r /d/backup-restic forget bdbd3439 --prune

Maintenance

Check the repository for errors (Run regularly) It is advisable to run restic check after pruning.

restic -r /d/backup-restic check

Remove old cache

restic -r /d/backup-restic cache --cleanup

Remove unneeded data from the repository

restic -r /d/backup-restic prune

To avoid asking for the password or the repository (Optional) set the following variables:

export RESTIC_PASSWORD="P45sWORD"
export RESTIC_REPOSITORY="/d/backup-restic"

If you set the variables, from now on, to the the backup just do:

restic backup /c/myfiles/to/save
restic snapshots

Basic example for automatic backup

From Windows (if you have bash) you can use Task Sheduler and set the "Program" to bash.exe and the "Arguments" to the script C:\restic_backup.sh For Linux you can use Cron.

Here is the script.

#!/bin/sh

export RESTIC_PASSWORD="My-P5ssw00rD"

restic -r _CLOUD-PROVIDER-FOLDER_ --verbose --tag _TAG-NAME_ backup _FOLDER_TO_BACKUP_

restic -r /d/nextcloud/restic-notes/ --verbose --tag jobnotes backup /d/jobs_notes/project1/
4
LinuxDoge
  
Positive commentDec 5, 2022

Deja Dup (GNOME), available as a Flatpak or on many other Distro packages, integrated Restic in its GUI as backup client, still in "unstable" phase.

0
Guest
  
Positive commentSep 14, 2022

Very secure and easy to use backup client. And now supports file compression on default! (v 0.14 or newer)

0
Remco
  
Positive commentJan 24, 2022

Download a single executable that just works; which is available for multiple operating systems. Which does elegant stream deduplication (inserts in files are much better handled compared to regular block deduplication), and which is one of the fastest comparable. Which happens to be foss but not fuzz. Offers just a CLI. And even allows data from piped commands to be back-upped (think pg_dump) and saves almost only the differences. Using some smart setups you can even deduplicate across machines... What isn't there to love?

0
serg10
  
Positive commentApr 15, 2020

As advertised it is fast, efficient, verifiable. It is not obvious how to begin with, but the documentation is pretty good and once started it is very powerful. Summarizing it can do incremental encrypted backups in the cloud or local, and the backups can be mounted.

I will use it for my personal backups.

2
INSIDE
  
Positive commentMar 16, 2019

duply & duplicity fan here. I must admit, that the restic VERY good tool (better in my opinion then borg, and a little bit better then duplicity). It's doing really fast backups, really effective space consuming. Restoring pretty easy too.

The problem over the tool, why I set just 4 stars, that entry point very hard.

But with something like the code below, you can minimize headache.

Script: (bash): https://paste.ee/p/etJXh

Just add your own parameters, and own paths, and the script will work fine for you.

1 reply
Cyber Nautilus

Please include the code into your review, for it to be really helpful to users of AlternativeTo.net

Thank you.

Reply written Aug 2, 2020

If this reply contains spam or other abuse, notify admins about it.
2
Amit Singh
  
ReviewAug 16, 2018

Restic has no GUI yet . No plans to implement it either . So it remains confined to hard core developers .

2 replies
Johxz

This comment is too old (2018), just for clarification, is not for "hard core developers" you don't either need to be an developers to use Restic.

Reply written Oct 22, 2020

If this reply contains spam or other abuse, notify admins about it.
superluminar

I agree that it is not for "hard core developers", but given that it needs to be configured and ran on the command line, it is likely that people who successfully use it also have some development or admin skills.

Reply written Sep 18, 2023

If this reply contains spam or other abuse, notify admins about it.
0

What is Restic?

Restic is a modern backup program that can back up your files: from Linux, BSD, Mac and Windows to many different storage types, including self-hosted and online services easily, being a single executable that you can run without a server or complex setup effectively, only transferring the parts that actually changed in the files you back up securely, by careful use of cryptography in every part of the process verifiably, enabling you to make sure that your files can be restored when needed freely - restic is entirely free to use and completely open source

Easy: Doing backups should be a frictionless process, otherwise you are tempted to skip it. Restic should be easy to configure and use, so that in the unlikely event of a data loss you can just restore it. Likewise, restoring data should not be complicated.

Fast: Backing up your data with restic should only be limited by your network or hard disk bandwidth so that you can backup your files every day. Nobody does backups if it takes too much time. Restoring backups should only transfer data that is needed for the files that are to be restored, so that this process is also fast.

Verifiable: Much more important than backup is restore, so restic enables you to easily verify that all data can be restored.

Secure: Restic uses cryptography to guarantee confidentiality and integrity of your data. The location the backup data is stored is assumed not to be a trusted environment (e.g. a shared space where others like system administrators are able to access your backups). Restic is built to secure your data against such attackers.

Official Links