# Arq Backup

30 Hacker News commenters recommended Arq Backup and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 10 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend Arq as a quiet, reliable backup tool that lets you bring your own storage and encrypts backups. Critics say it's less polished, especially on Windows.

## Why people recommend it

- Reliable, quiet, set-and-forget backups (6 comments): "Very happy user of Arq - been running a daily scheduled dual backup of my HDD to an external NAS and Backblaze B2 for years with zero issues." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767582)) "It has always been the least problematic, least intrusive, most reliable backup and restore option for me." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47770902)) "I've been extremely happy with Arq for several years as a quiet backup solution, bring your own storage." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768838))
- Bring your own storage (5 comments): "I've been extremely happy with Arq for several years as a quiet backup solution, bring your own storage." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47768838)) "Arq scratches the itch of having control over your backups and putting them where you want with a GUI" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767669)) "Arq is a pretty decent backup solution for macOS (and Windows) that lets you bring your own storage." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45875644))
- Encrypted backups to any storage (3 comments): "I use Arq (highly recommended!) to maintain a remote encrypted backup on a VPS" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49354708)) "It does incremental encrypted backups and supports a lot of storage providers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47763597)) "They just see a bunch of encrypted files with random GUID filenames." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47766302))
- Smart Mac-specific backup options (4 comments): "Arq Backup works great on Mac. It has a lot of smart features like only backing up on certain networks" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45873863)) "Arq has an option to "materialize" dataless files, basically forcing them to be locally available." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46252920)) "simply gives you an option in backup plans for what to do with cloud only files" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47765287))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Tarsnap](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tarsnap.md): 9 recommend
- [Duplicati](https://hackerapproved.com/p/duplicati.md): 6 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.arqbackup.com/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Arq Backup", https://hackerapproved.com/p/arq-backup/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).