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Borg Backup

Deduplicating archiver with compression and encryption

As of 30 August 2026, Borg Backup is free to use. Borg Backup is a deduplicating backup program with support for compression and authenticated encryption. Softwr lists it under Backup. Borg Backup is made by Borg Collective, launched in 2015, available on Linux, macOS.

Overview

What Borg Backup does

Borg Backup is a deduplicating backup program with support for compression and authenticated encryption. It provides efficient storage through content-defined chunking and offers fast backup speeds with flexible retention policies.

What people use it for

  • Deduplicated backups where daily full snapshots would otherwise be expensive
  • Encrypted backup to a server you do not fully trust, since the server never sees plaintext
  • Browsing previous versions by mounting an archive over FUSE
  • Scripted server backups with no agent or daemon to run

The honest half

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Borg Backup.

  • Linux, macOS and BSD only; Windows is not a supported platform
  • Command-line only, with no graphical interface in the project itself
  • Version 2.0 is still in beta, so production use means staying on the 1.4 line
  • Restoring requires the Borg tooling, since archives are a deduplicated chunk store rather than plain files

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Borg Backup

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Pricing

What Borg Backup costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Free

Free

  • Deduplication
  • Compression
  • Encryption

Capabilities

Features

  • Content-defined chunking

  • Deduplication

  • Compression

  • Authenticated encryption

  • Pruning

  • Mount archives

  • SSH

    Integration with SSH

  • BorgBase

    Integration with BorgBase

  • rsync.net

    Integration with rsync.net

  • Hetzner Storage Box

    Integration with Hetzner Storage Box

  • Linux support

    Available on linux

  • Mac support

    Available on mac

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

What is the cost of BorgBackup?

BorgBackup is completely free and open source under the BSD license with no mandatory costs for the core software.

Source
Are there paid services available for BorgBackup?

Yes, optional third-party services are available: BorgBase for specialized Borg repository hosting, Hetzner Storage Box with Borg support, and rsync.net cloud storage integration.

Source
How can I support the BorgBackup project?

BorgBackup accepts voluntary contributions through Open Collective, GitHub Sponsors, Liberapay, and PayPal, though donations are optional.

Source

Behind it

Who makes Borg Backup

Company
Borg Collective
Based in
Open Source Community
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Borg Backup, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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