Is Duplicati or Longhorn better?

Neither clearly leads. Duplicati starts at Free and Longhorn at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.

Which is cheaper, Duplicati or Longhorn?

Duplicati starts at Free and Longhorn at Free.

Does Duplicati or Longhorn run on more platforms?

Duplicati runs on Windows, macOS, Linux. Longhorn runs on Linux, Kubernetes.

Can I use Duplicati for free?

Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.

What is Duplicati best used for?

Duplicati is most often used for data protection, disaster recovery, business continuity, ransomware protection. Of those, data protection and disaster recovery are not what Longhorn is typically brought in for.

What can Duplicati do that Longhorn cannot?

Duplicati covers AES-256 encryption, Incremental backup, Deduplication, Multiple cloud backends. Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers, Synchronous replication, Snapshots and backups, Volume expansion. Both handle Web interface.

File Storage · head to head

Duplicati vs Longhorn

Duplicati

File Storage

Free open-source backup with encryption

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

Longhorn

Cloud

Open source distributed block storage for Kubernetes, incubating at the CNCF

From: Free
Rated: -

Full review Website

The short version

Each has a real cost: Duplicati no managed service or commercial support; Longhorn there is no vendor and no SLA, so a production incident at three in the morning is your own problem unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime support separately.
They diverge on capability: Duplicati covers AES-256 encryption, Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers.
Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Duplicati and Longhorn actually diverge.

Attributes where Duplicati and Longhorn differ
Attribute	Duplicati	Longhorn
Pricing model	Unknown	Open source, no licence fee
Platforms	Windows, macOS, Linux	Linux, Kubernetes
Category	File Storage	Cloud
Founded	2008	Unknown

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Duplicati

AES-256 encryption
Incremental backup
Deduplication
Multiple cloud backends
Compression
AWS S3
Azure
Google Drive

Only in Longhorn

Per-volume controllers
Synchronous replication
Snapshots and backups
Volume expansion
Disaster recovery volumes

Both cover

Web interface

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Duplicati

Data protectionnot Longhorn
Disaster recoverynot Longhorn
Business continuitynot Longhorn
Ransomware protectionnot Longhorn
Compliancenot Longhorn

Longhorn

An on-premises Kubernetes cluster with local disks and no SAN that needs replicated persistent volumesnot Duplicati
Edge sites where shipping a storage array is impractical and three nodes is the whole clusternot Duplicati
A K3s deployment where the storage layer must be light enough to run alongside the workloadsnot Duplicati
A team that wants snapshots and S3 backups of persistent volumes without paying per-node storage licencesnot Duplicati

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Duplicati

No managed service or commercial support
Relies on community support
No enterprise features

Longhorn

There is no vendor and no SLA, so a production incident at three in the morning is your own problem unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime support separately.
Synchronous replication across nodes means write latency depends on the slowest replica and the network between nodes, which makes it a poor fit for latency-sensitive databases.
Every replica is a full copy, so three-way replication consumes three times the raw capacity, unlike erasure-coded systems that are far more space efficient.
It is designed for block storage on modest clusters and does not scale to the node counts or throughput that Ceph or a commercial array handles, so growth eventually forces a migration.
Recovery from certain degraded states, such as a volume stuck detaching or replicas failing to rebuild, requires manual intervention and knowledge of Longhorn internals that is not widely held.

Pricing, plan by plan

Duplicati

Free

No published plan breakdown. See the Duplicati review.

Longhorn

Free

LonghornFree
- Apache 2.0 licensed, no licence fee
- Community support via GitHub and Slack only
- No vendor SLA or escalation path

Which should you pick?

Choose Duplicati if

You need aes-256 encryption.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Windows, macOS, Linux.
You also want incremental backup.

Duplicati review

Choose Longhorn if

You need per-volume controllers.
You want to start without paying.
You work on Linux, Kubernetes.
You also want synchronous replication.

Longhorn review

Questions people ask

Is Duplicati or Longhorn better?: Neither clearly leads. Duplicati starts at Free and Longhorn at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Duplicati or Longhorn?: Duplicati starts at Free and Longhorn at Free.
Does Duplicati or Longhorn run on more platforms?: Duplicati runs on Windows, macOS, Linux. Longhorn runs on Linux, Kubernetes.
Can I use Duplicati for free?: Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Duplicati best used for?: Duplicati is most often used for data protection, disaster recovery, business continuity, ransomware protection. Of those, data protection and disaster recovery are not what Longhorn is typically brought in for.
What can Duplicati do that Longhorn cannot?: Duplicati covers AES-256 encryption, Incremental backup, Deduplication, Multiple cloud backends. Longhorn covers Per-volume controllers, Synchronous replication, Snapshots and backups, Volume expansion. Both handle Web interface.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Duplicati: Is Duplicati free?

Yes. Duplicati is completely free and open-source under the LGPL license. There are no premium tiers, trials, or limitations.

Source

Longhorn: Who do we call when it breaks?

Nobody, unless you buy SUSE Rancher Prime, which includes commercial support for Longhorn. This is the decisive question for production use.

Duplicati: What does Duplicati support?

Duplicati supports zero-trust, fully encrypted backups to local storage, network drives, and cloud services. It includes deduplication and incremental backups.

Source

Longhorn: How much capacity does replication cost?

Full copies, so three replicas means three times the raw capacity. Budget accordingly rather than assuming erasure coding efficiency.

Duplicati: What are the platforms?

Duplicati runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It can back up data to local storage, network drives, or cloud providers.

Source

Longhorn: Is it suitable for production databases?

For modest workloads yes, but synchronous replication adds write latency and high-transaction databases usually want something faster.

Duplicati vs Longhorn

Duplicati

Longhorn

The short version

Where they differ

What each one covers

Only in Duplicati

Only in Longhorn

Both cover

What people use each for

Duplicati

Longhorn

Where each one falls short

Duplicati

Longhorn

Pricing, plan by plan

Duplicati

Longhorn

Which should you pick?

Choose Duplicati if

Choose Longhorn if

Questions people ask

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Related pages

More on Duplicati

More on Longhorn

Keep looking

Other head to heads