Backup · pricing
rustic pricing
rustic publishes a single tier. Below is what it costs, what it covers, and how that compares with the backup tools listed alongside it.
As of 31 August 2026, rustic pricing is free. Figures are the vendor's list prices as recorded on this page's last check; the vendor's site is the final word.
- Entry price
- Free
- Model
- Open source, no licence fee
- Tiers
- 1
- Free tier
- Yes
rustic plans, side by side
Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.
| Plan | Price | Features listed | Step up from the tier below |
|---|---|---|---|
| rustic | Free | 4 | Entry tier |
Where rustic stops being free
rustic, Free
- Full functionality, no data limit
- All supported storage back ends
- Community support via GitHub
- Dual licensed Apache and MIT
No paid tier on record
rustic lists a free tier and no priced tier above it in the record we hold.
What the product covers
The full rustic feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.
Other
- restic format compatibility
- Configuration profiles
- Deduplicated encrypted backups
- Cold and append only storage support
- Multiple back ends
- Library crates
People bring rustic in for an existing restic user who wants configuration files rather than long command lines in cron, backing up a memory constrained machine where the reference implementation is uncomfortably heavy, writing to append only or cold object storage where the default tooling assumes rewritable buckets, keeping a second implementation available so a long lived archive does not depend on one codebase. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to rustic are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Backup
Too few backup tools in this directory publish a starting price to quote a meaningful median, so the table below is a like-for-like list rather than a ranking.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Rated | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| rustic (this page) | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | |
| Velero | Free | Open source, no licence fee | - | vs rustic |
| Clumio | $0.01/month | Per GiB-month protected | - | vs rustic |
| Portworx Backup | Free, then $0.2/node hour | Per node hour | - | vs rustic |
| Trilio | Free | Per node per year | - | vs rustic |
| AvePoint Cloud Backup | On request | quote | - | vs rustic |
| HYCU | On request | quote | - | vs rustic |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the rustic badges page.
Before you pay for rustic
Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.
What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: a single tier at Free. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
rustic runs on linux, macos, windows, and is published by rustic contributors of Distributed. The full record is on the rustic review, and the rest of the category is under best backup tools.
rustic pricing questions
- How much does rustic cost?
- rustic publishes a single tier, rustic, at Free.
- Does rustic have a free plan?
- Yes. The rustic tier costs nothing and covers full functionality, no data limit, all supported storage back ends, community support via github.
- Which backup tools can I use without paying?
- 4 of the 8 backup tools listed alongside rustic have a free tier: Velero, Portworx Backup, Trilio, Veeam Kasten for Kubernetes.
- What am I actually paying for with rustic?
- The record lists 6 features across 1 area: other. In practice it is brought in for an existing restic user who wants configuration files rather than long command lines in cron, backing up a memory constrained machine where the reference implementation is uncomfortably heavy, writing to append only or cold object storage where the default tooling assumes rewritable buckets.
- Does rustic charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 1 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
- Are these rustic prices current?
- They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
- What should I compare rustic against before paying?
- The closest backup tools in this directory are Velero, Clumio, Portworx Backup, Trilio. Each has a side-by-side comparison with rustic covering price, platforms and features.