Backblaze Personal Backup vs Restic
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Backblaze Personal Backup and Restic.
Quick Verdict
4.3/5
Backblaze Personal Backup
0 reviews
4.3/5
Restic
0 reviews
Both Backblaze Personal Backup and Restic are equally rated at 4.3/5. Backblaze Personal Backup offers unlimited computer backup for $9/month. Backs up your Mac or PC continuously in the background. No file size limits, no throttling. Restic is a modern backup program that uses content-addressable storage, deduplication, and AES-256 encryption. Backs up to S3, B2, Google Cloud, SFTP, and more. No server required.
Backblaze Personal Backup Unlimited Mac/PC backup for $9/month | Restic Fast, secure, encrypted open source backup | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.3 (0 reviews) | 4.3 (0 reviews) |
| Pricing model | paid | free |
| Starting price | From $9/mo | Free✓ |
| Best for | Individuals and home workers with one data-heavy Mac or PC plus external drives wanting set-and-forget unlimited backup | Developers and sysadmins who want encrypted, deduplicated off-site backups to any storage backend and are comfortable owning key management and operations. |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ✓ | |
| Snapshots | ||
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ||
| Free tier | ✓ | |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | mobile app | free tieropen source |
| Visit Backblaze Personal Backup → | Visit Restic → | |
Backblaze Personal Backup
Pros
- + Truly unlimited backup per computer — no capacity cap, no file size limit
- + Connected external drives included under the same license
- + One-year version history is free to enable; Forever retention metered at $0.006/GB/month
- + Restore by mailed encrypted USB drive (1–8 TB), refunded when returned within 30 days
- + Simple, stable pricing ($9/month or $99/year) with a 15-day no-card trial
Cons
- - One license per computer — multi-machine households pay full price each
- - No NAS, network drive, or server support
- - 30-day default version window is short for late-detected ransomware
- - No availability SLA for personal accounts
- - Monthly plans carry no refund; external drives must reconnect every 30 days
Restic
Pros
- + Free BSD-2-Clause software with no paid tier or usage caps
- + Client-side AES-256-CTR encryption with Poly1305 authentication is always on
- + Content-addressed deduplication: incremental backups and multi-machine repositories
- + Native support for S3, B2, GCS, Azure Blob, SFTP, and REST backends; rclone for the rest
- + Openly documented repository format — no vendor lock-in, portable repositories
Cons
- - No password recovery: lose the repository key and the data is gone
- - Command-line only — scheduling, monitoring, and alerting are external
- - Community support only; no SLA or paid support option
- - Repository maintenance (prune, check) requires operational discipline
- - Pre-1.0 version numbering; the API surface can still shift between releases
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