Duplicati vs Amazon S3
A detailed comparison to help you choose between Duplicati and Amazon S3.
Quick Verdict
4.0/5
Duplicati
0 reviews
4.1/5
Amazon S3
0 reviews
Amazon S3 is rated higher (4.1 vs 4.0). Duplicati is a free, open source backup client that stores encrypted, compressed backups to local drives or cloud storage (S3, B2, Google Drive, OneDrive, and more). Web-based UI. AWS S3 stores and retrieves unlimited amounts of data via a simple web interface. Built for developers, enterprises, and anyone needing reliable, durable cloud storage with pay-as-you-go pricing.
Duplicati Free open source backup to any cloud storage |  Amazon S3 Scalable object storage for any data size or type | |
|---|---|---|
| Overview | ||
| Rating | 4.0 (0 reviews) | 4.1 (0 reviews)✓ |
| Pricing model | freemium | pay-as-you-go (per GB-month + per 1,000 requests + retrieval/transfer) |
| Starting price | Free tier available✓ | From $0.023/mo |
| Best for | Home users and small businesses wanting free, encrypted, bring-your-own-storage backups with a GUI and a scriptable CLI | Teams building on AWS who need durable, API-stable object storage for backups, data lakes, static content and archives — and who value tooling compatibility over the lowest per-GB rate |
| Features | ||
| IPv6 | ||
| DDoS protection | ||
| Automated backups | ✓ | |
| Snapshots | ✓ | |
| Managed option | ||
| Bare metal | ||
| GPU available | ||
| S3-compatible | ||
| Hourly billing | ✓ | |
| Free tier | ||
| Data-center locations | ||
| Regions | — | 39 AWS regions / 123-124 AZs |
| Tags | ||
| Tags | free tieropen source | free tiers3 compatibleapi accessus datacentereu datacenterapac datacenterterraform provider |
| Visit Duplicati → | Visit Amazon S3 → | |
Duplicati
Pros
- + Client is completely free (MIT core) — you only pay your storage provider
- + Client-side AES-256/GPG encryption with keys that never leave your machine
- + Wide backend coverage: S3, B2, Azure, Google Drive, OneDrive, MEGA, Storj, WebDAV, SFTP, FTP and more
- + Incremental backups, deduplication, compression and scheduling keep storage costs low
- + Cheap tenant backup for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace at $0.50 per user per month
Cons
- - Local metadata database can desync after interrupted runs; repair on large sets is slow
- - Years of 2.x beta left a mixed reliability reputation that newer releases have had to overcome
- - Free-tier support is community-only (forum, GitHub issues); priority support is a paid console feature
- - Open-core split: parts of the repository (console stack) are under the company's license, not MIT
Amazon S3
Pros
- + Designed for 11 nines durability with cross-AZ replication by default and strong read-after-write consistency
- + The S3 API is the industry standard — code written in 2006 still works, and third-party compatibility is everywhere
- + 23x cost ladder from Standard down to Glacier Deep Archive at $0.00099/GB-month, with lifecycle automation
- + Deepest storage feature set available: versioning, Object Lock, replication, inventory, event notifications, access management
Cons
- - Egress at $0.09/GB and per-request pricing produce surprise bills for chatty or restore-heavy workloads
- - IA and Glacier classes add retrieval fees and latency — the restore path must be priced separately
- - Policy configuration (bucket policies, IAM, Block Public Access, KMS keys) is complex and historically error-prone
- - SLA (99.9%/99.0%) is far below the durability figure — availability and durability are different promises
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