# BorgBackup

12 Hacker News commenters recommended BorgBackup and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Fast, deduplicated, encrypted backups that are easy to restore and run with limited privileges. One critic worries deduplication is a backup liability.

## Why people recommend it

- Fast backups, deletes, and restores (2 comments): "It's just faster to back up, faster to delete old backups, and just easier to do restores" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46857664)) "BorgBackup will be far more efficient than rsync" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46480442))
- Deduplication and compression across snapshots (2 comments): "It's deduplicated, even across snapshots, compressed, and end-to-end encrypted." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46852760)) "this massive reduplication of files became a solved problem" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48829440))
- Reliable, works well for daily backups (5 comments): "Borg backup is a good tool in my opinion and has everything that I need" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47764021)) "works great as a Borg server for daily backup" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50016339)) "Borg has worked very well for me in the past" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46855498))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Kopia](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kopia.md): 16 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "BorgBackup", https://hackerapproved.com/p/borgbackup/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).