BorgBase

What BorgBase actually is

BorgBase is offsite storage for one specific job: holding repositories created by BorgBackup and Restic. It is operated by Peakford Ltd from Malta, the same small company behind PikaPods and boutique managed hosting, and it has been run long enough to become the default recommendation in self-hosting circles. The product does not back up your files itself. It gives the open-source tools a safe place to push encrypted, deduplicated archives — and then watches that the backups actually happen.

That division of labour is the whole design. Borg (open sourced in 2010, maintained by an active community) runs on your machine, encrypts and deduplicates locally, and streams the result over SSH to a repository on BorgBase; Restic does the same over HTTP. BorgBase's job is to be a reliable, append-only, quota-managed destination with a decent control panel: create repositories over a web UI or API, attach SSH keys, set quotas, choose EU or US storage per repository, and get warned by email, Pushover, or webhook when a backup goes stale. The setup wizard prints copy-paste commands, and templates exist for Borgmatic (CLI) and Vorta (the BorgBase-maintained desktop GUI for macOS and Linux).

Our view: this is the rare hosting product where the scope limitation is the feature. Because BorgBase only does repositories, it can do the parts that actually matter for backups properly — append-only mode so a compromised laptop cannot delete history, 2FA, per-repo isolation, server-side compaction, and billing on storage consumed after compression and deduplication. If you already run Borg or Restic, there is very little to decide. If you want a consumer backup app with a restore button, this is not your product.

Pricing: what you really pay

Start with the free tier, because it is unusually honest: 10 GB across 2 repositories, free forever, no credit card required, and no data-transfer or API charges on top. That is enough for a laptop's dotfiles and documents, and it is a real entry point rather than a 14-day trial.

Paid plans are billed annually in USD (VAT added for European customers): Small at $30 per year with 250 GB included and 10 repositories; Medium at $110 per year with 1 TB included and unlimited repositories; Large at $210 per year with 2 TB included, also available at $20 per month. Overage is metered at $0.015 per GB per month on Small, $12 per TB per month on Medium, and $10 per TB per month on Large — the same unit quoted two ways, marginally cheaper per gigabyte as you go up. Repositories can sit in both EU and US regions under one account, and you can mix regions freely.

Three billing details matter. First, you pay for bytes stored after client-side compression and deduplication — the billed quantity is smaller than the data you protect, which is the structural advantage of backing up with Borg rather than a plain file sync. Second, restores are free: no egress, no API fees, no per-restore charges; the vendor explicitly says it charges only for storage and asks you not to abuse traffic. Third, there is a flexible quota up to three times your base plan's space, billed pay-as-you-go on daily usage — so a one-off influx of data does not force a plan change (custom plans exist beyond that, arranged by email). Refunds run 30 days on annual plans and 3 days on monthly ones, with the EU's 14-day withdrawal right respected on top.

One note on third-party figures: some review sites quote the Small plan as $24/year and overage at $0.01/GB; the vendor's own pages say $30/year and $0.015/GB. We go with the vendor and flag the discrepancy — check the pricing page at checkout.

Performance & infrastructure

For a backup destination, performance means ingest throughput, dedup behaviour, and restore reliability — not latency. BorgBase leans into the Borg model: efficient transfer of only new, compressed blocks, server-side compaction to keep repositories fast, and per-repository isolation. The control panel exposes usage, quotas and security settings, and the API covers repository creation and management so you can provision backup space for new machines automatically — the use case for anyone managing a fleet.

Security posture is the strongest part of the spec sheet. Backups are encrypted end-to-end (BorgBase states it never sees contents), append-only mode prevents tampering with existing archives even if a client is compromised, and 2FA protects the account layer. The company states it implements the GDPR data-protection measures, offers EU and US storage choice per repository, and keeps repositories isolated from each other.

What it deliberately does not do is spelled out in the terms, and we respect the candour: there is no geographic redundancy — no backup of your backup — the service is explicitly an offsite copy destination, not a primary archive, and the ToS disclaims guarantees of integrity, availability, or recoverability in all circumstances. If your data matters, the vendor says, verify restores yourself and keep copies in more than one place. That is the correct position for a backup product to take, but it does mean no SLA: we found no published uptime commitment, only the refund window and email support from a small team ("expert support via e-mail" per the plans).

The open-source credentials are real rather than decorative: Peakford maintains Vorta, sponsors Borgmatic and Pika Backup, and publishes its tooling on GitHub. For buyers who weight ecosystem health — and with a backup tool, the client's longevity matters as much as the server's — this is a meaningful signal.

Where it falls short

Scope, twice. This is storage for two backup tools: if you want image-based backups, Windows agents, bare-metal recovery, S3-compatible object storage, or a polished web restore browser for non-technical staff, BorgBase will not do it. The Restic HTTP support broadens things slightly, but the workflow assumes you are comfortable with a command line or one of the Borg GUIs.

Second, no redundancy across regions: within a region your data is protected against hardware failure, but a site-level disaster on their side is your problem by contract. Users with serious requirements should follow the ToS's own advice — keep a second copy elsewhere (a NAS, another provider, or a second BorgBase region treated as an independent target).

Third, the company is small. Support is email-only, there is no published SLA, and capacity planning for very large custom volumes is an email conversation. For a freelancer, a homelab, or a small team that is fine; for an enterprise procurement process it will be a gap. Finally, pricing on the review sites disagrees with the vendor's pages, which suggests either recent price changes or sloppy aggregation — measure it yourself at signup.

Who should pick this

Our pick for BorgBase is anyone already using BorgBackup or Restic who wants offsite storage without operating a second server: sysadmins with a home server or NAS, freelancers protecting workstations, small teams with Linux fleets, and homelabbers who treat restore-testing as a hobby. The free 10 GB tier is the right way to start — set up a repo, run a week of scheduled backups, do a test restore, then pay. The Small plan at $30 per year is one of the cheapest insurance policies in our backup solutions category.

We would also point automation-heavy setups at the API: provisioning a repository per machine and arming stale-backup alerts is a ten-minute script, and the append-only mode gives you a defensible answer to ransomware questions. If you need managed business continuity with compliance paperwork, contractual SLAs, or non-technical restore flows, look at the enterprise backup vendors instead. Everyone else: the combination of append-only repos, alerting on missed backups, and billing after dedup is exactly what a backup product should be.

Key takeaways

• Purpose-built hosting for BorgBackup and Restic repositories, run by Peakford Ltd (Malta) — storage only, done properly.
• Free forever tier: 10 GB across 2 repositories, no credit card, no transfer or API charges; paid plans from $30/year (250 GB).
• Billed on storage after compression and deduplication; restores and API calls are free; flexible quota up to 3x base plan on pay-as-you-go.
• Append-only mode, 2FA, end-to-end encryption, per-repo isolation, and stale-backup alerts via email, Pushover, or webhook.
• EU and US storage regions, mixable per repository under one account; web UI plus a full API with copy-paste setup for Borg, Borgmatic, and Vorta.
• No geographic redundancy, no published SLA, email-only support — verify restores yourself and keep a second copy elsewhere.

Sources

• https://www.borgbase.com/
• https://www.borgbase.com/tos/
• https://docs.borgbase.com/
• https://docs.borgbase.com/pricing
• https://docs.borgbase.com/setup/borg/cli
• https://inetgeek.com/backup/borgbase/