# Tarsnap

9 Hacker News commenters recommended Tarsnap and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People recommend Tarsnap as a very good encrypted backup service with brilliant software, though critics say it is expensive.

## Why people recommend it

- Encrypted backups, well regarded (2 comments): "I really loved the backup service of Colin Percival, tarsnap." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47584738)) "Tarsnap, a (very good) encrypted backup service" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50063057))
- Listed among top backup programs (3 comments): "using any of a number of actual backup programs: borg, restic, hashbackup, tarsnap, others" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46054839)) "tarsnap, restic, borgbackup and others are your friend" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49033068)) "There's Backblaze and Arq and Tarsnap, amongst others." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47844326))

## What people warn about

- Expensive for what it does (1 comments): "Cool product and the owner is a good dude, but good Lord is it expensive." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46041493))
- Lacks smartcard support (1 comments): "It does not even support smartcards, so just shove your private key for your entire filesystem in system memory" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48303947))
- Cannot be self-hosted or audited (1 comments): "you cannot selfhost it. it's not verified and audited independently as a whole system." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46486721))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Arq Backup](https://hackerapproved.com/p/arq-backup.md): 30 recommend
- [Duplicati](https://hackerapproved.com/p/duplicati.md): 6 recommend

## Where to get it

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

## Cite as

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