Duplicati
Ranked 8 of 8 backup software by recommenders
Free encrypted backup tool that keeps data unless you exclude it and reports failures. Critics say retrieving files from cold storage is slow.
Free encrypted backup tool that keeps data unless you exclude it and reports failures. Critics say retrieving files from cold storage is slow.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 67%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Does not silently skip data
“we take special care to not silently skip things as this is likely to cause problems when you want to restore later”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Backblaze has stopped backing up your data” “one thing we've tried to be careful about is not silently ignoring data”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “Backblaze has stopped backing up your data” Control over what gets backed up
“You get the benefit of encrypted backups, have more control over what to back up, and will be notified upon failure.”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “Backblaze has stopped backing up your data” “Duplicati, at least, keeps everything except that which I tell it not to”
Comment from 14 Apr 2026 in “Backblaze has stopped backing up your data”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow retrieval from cold storage
“It's a serious pain in the ass because it takes hours to queue up and retrieve a file.”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Backblaze has stopped backing up your data” “It's a serious pain in the ass because it takes hours to queue up and retrieve a file”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Backblaze has stopped backing up your data”
Other backup software people recommend
The four most recommended other backup software, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time Machine | 70 | 95 | 42% | 13 | 6 yrs13 owners | — |
| Arq Backup | 30 | 2 | 94% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Kopia | 16 | 2 | 89% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Carbon Copy Cloner | 15 | 0 | 100% | 9 | — | Approved |
| DuplicatiThis page | 6 | 3 | 67% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
All 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“we take special care to not silently skip things as this is likely to cause problems when you want to restore later”
“It's a serious pain in the ass because it takes hours to queue up and retrieve a file.”
“It's a serious pain in the ass because it takes hours to queue up and retrieve a file”
“I've been using Duplicati to sync a lot of data to S3's cheapest tape-based long term storage tier.”
“one thing we've tried to be careful about is not silently ignoring data”
“You get the benefit of encrypted backups, have more control over what to back up, and will be notified upon failure.”
“Duplicati was sending it so many requests it would cause my server to start sending back error 500s”
“Duplicati, at least, keeps everything except that which I tell it not to”
“Duplicati was easy enough to convince the family”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.