# Barman

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/barman/

15 people recommended Barman in Hacker News comments, 1 had mixed feelings and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 12 months, in 8 threads. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend Barman as a solid, long-used PostgreSQL backup and restore tool with point-in-time recovery. Its most common caveat is no direct backup to S3 object storage.

Summary written by Claude from 23 comments.

## Why people recommend it

- Solid, reliable backup and restore (5 comments in the sample): "the backup mechanism using Barman for database snapshots and WAL backups is vastly superior" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46338945)) "I've used barman on somewhat large-ish DBs (30+ TB), and had no complaints with it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47920713)) "we have been using barman for a long time very happily" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47922855))
- Point-in-time restore via WAL backups (2 comments in the sample): "This allows for point-in-time restores, but there were a lot of lessons to learn along the way." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49737703)) "Setup pgbackreset or barman, use WAL archiving and setup block incremental backups" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49011328))
- Mature, widely used open source (2 comments in the sample): "This is a fantastic project that a lot of self-hosters using PostgreSQL use." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47987187)) "Barman has been around since 2011, released under the GPL." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47924033))
- Good fit for Kubernetes (1 comment in the sample): "Barman Cloud was a convenient choice for CloudNativePG (CNPG" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48030410))

## What people warn about

- No direct S3 or object storage backup (3 comments in the sample): "It's been solid, although I've had a few complaints about 1) inability to set S3 storage classes, 2) slow upload for very large databases." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47989160)) "It looks like Barman doesn't support direct backup to object storage, unfortunately." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47920256)) "Barman didn't support backups to S3" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47987771))

## Other backup tools people recommend

- [restic](https://hackerapproved.com/p/restic/): 72 recommend, 7 mixed, 5 criticize
- [Time Machine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/time-machine/): 50 recommend, 14 mixed, 86 criticize
- [Arq Backup](https://hackerapproved.com/p/arq-backup/): 27 recommend, 2 mixed, 1 criticize
- [Borg Backup](https://hackerapproved.com/p/borg/): 27 recommend, 3 mixed, 8 criticize

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Barman", https://hackerapproved.com/p/barman/ (15 recommend, 1 mixed, 3 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 3 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.