# restic

> BSD-2-Clause encrypted, deduplicated backups to many backends

**Category:** DevOps  
**Pricing:** open-source  
**URL:** https://restic.net  
**GitHub:** https://github.com/restic/restic  
**Added:** 2026-09-11

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## The Hook

restic is the backup binary when “rsync to a folder” stopped being a strategy and you need encrypted snapshots you can actually restore.

## What's Good

BSD-2-Clause. restic/restic. Client-side encryption, dedup, snapshots across local/S3/SFTP and other backends. Single static-ish Go binary for Linux/macOS/Windows. Docs at restic.readthedocs.io. Free forever — no license server.

## The Catch

You still own the repository password (lose it = lose data) and the backend bill/ops. Not a SaaS backup console with support SLAs. Scheduling, monitoring, and restore drills are on you. Complementary to object stores (Garage), not a replacement for app-level PITR.

## Verdict

BSD-2-Clause backup CLI. Free forever encryption + dedup; pay only for where the blobs live.