Borg is a fork of Attic. It is a secure open source deduplicating backup program designed for efficient data storage where only new or modified data is stored.
The main goal of Borg is to provide an efficient and secure way to backup data. The data deduplication technique used makes Borg suitable for daily backups since only the changes are stored. The authenticated encryption makes it suitable for backups to not fully trusted targets.
Borg is written in Python. Borg was created in May 2015 in response to the difficulty of getting new code or larger changes incorporated into Attic.
Key Features
- Easy to use.
- Space efficient storage – variable block size deduplication is used to reduce the number of bytes stored by detecting redundant data.
- Optional data encryption using 256-bit AES encryption. Data integrity and authenticity is verified using HMAC-SHA256.
- Compression: LZ4, zlib, LZMA, zstd (since borg 1.1.4).
- Off-site backups with SDSH.
- Backups mountable as filesystems.
- Easy installation on multiple platforms: Linux, macOS, BSD, …
Website: www.borgbackup.org
Support: FAQ, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: The Borg Collective
License: 3-clause BSD license

Borg is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Backup Tools | |
|---|---|
| restic | Fast, efficient and secure backup software |
| Borg | Deduplicating backup software |
| Duplicity | Encrypted bandwidth-efficient backup |
| TimeShift | Takes regular incremental snapshots of the filesystem |
| Duplicati | Store encrypted backups online |
| bup | Backup a system based on the git packfile format |
| Déjà Dup | Hides the complexity of doing backups the Right Way |
| Bacula | Network backup, recovery and verification |
| Kopia | Secure backup/restore tool that allows you to create encrypted snapshots |
| Clonezilla | Offers similar functionality to Symantec Ghost |
| Bareos | Backup Archiving Recovery Open Sourced |
| rsync | Fast remote file copy program |
| BackupPC | High-performance, enterprise-grade system for backing up PCs |
| Vorta | Desktop client for Borg Backup |
| Backrest | Web UI and orchestrator for restic backup |
| Back in Time | Equivalent of OS X's Time Machine |
| UrBackup | Easy to setup open source client/server backup system |
| Rescuezilla | Easy backup, recovery & bare metal restore |
| Mondo Rescue | A powerful disaster recovery suite |
| KBackup | Backup program targeted at non-computer experts |
| rsnapshot | Local and remote filesystem snapshot utility |
| Amanda | Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver |
| FOG | Cloning / imaging solution / rescue suite |
| Partclone | Provides utilities to save and restore used blocks on a partition |
| XtraBackup | Backup tool for InnoDB and XtraDB databases |
| Plakar | Scalable backup solution |
| kup | Backup scheduler for the Plasma desktop |
| BURP | Uses librsync to save network traffic and space |
| Btrbk | Backup tool for btrfs subvolumes |
| Pika Backup | App focused on backups of personal data |
| PING | Also offers similar functionality to Symantec Ghost |
| dar | Full featured archiver with support for differential backups |
| tar | Tar archiving utility |
| Cedar Backup | Local and remote backups to CD or DVD media |
| shallow-backup | Git-integrated backup tool |
| ArchiveKeep | Keeps your files archived in multiple places |
| ZnapZend | ZFS centric backup tool |
| Vykar | Fast, encrypted, deduplicated backups in Rust |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| DeDuplicating Encryption Tools | |
|---|---|
| restic | Fast, efficient and secure backup software |
| Borg | Deduplicating archiver with compression and encryption |
| Duplicity | Incrementally backs up files and directory by encrypting tar-format volumes |
| Duplicati | Store encrypted backups online |
| bup | Provides an efficient way to backup a system based on the git packfile format |
| Kopia | Secure backup/restore tool that allows you to create encrypted snapshots |
| BackupPC | High-performance, enterprise-grade system for backup |
| Vorta | Desktop client for Borg Backup |
| UrBackup | Client/server backup system |
| Vykar | Fast, encrypted, deduplicated backups in Rust |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |

