deduplicating archiver — est. 2015
Backups with deduplication, compression and authenticated encryption.
Redundancy is futile. Your data will be deduplicated.
capabilities
One archiver. Every defense your data needs.
Borg stores your files as content-defined chunks. Identical chunks are stored exactly once — across files, across machines, across years of history.
Space-efficient storage
Content-defined chunking deduplicates everything in the repository. Daily full backups cost little more than the changes since yesterday.
Authenticated encryption
AES encryption with cryptographic authentication. Your backup server never needs to be trusted — it only ever sees ciphertext.
Compression
Pick your trade-off: lz4 for speed, zstd for balance, zlib and lzma for maximum squeeze — or none at all.
Mountable archives
Mount any archive as a regular filesystem with FUSE and browse old versions of your files like any folder.
Runs everywhere you do
Easy installation on Linux, macOS, BSD and more — from distribution packages, single-file binaries, or pip.
Free & open source
BSD licensed, developed in the open, and backed by a large, active community since 2015.
deduplication
Store it once. Reference it forever.
Three nightly backups of the same machine. Most chunks already exist in the repository — Borg stores only what changed.
Visualization: night 1 stores eight new chunks, A through H. Night 2 sees the same chunks again plus one new chunk I — only I is stored. Night 3 adds only the new chunk J. Duplicates are never stored twice.
history stays complete, the repository stays small.
in practice
A backup is one command.
No daemons, no agents, no lock-in. Point Borg at a repository — local disk, USB drive, or any machine you can reach over SSH — and go.
demo
Watch real sessions, not marketing.
Recorded terminal sessions — every frame is real text, so you can pause the player and select and copy anything you see.
loading player…
install
Get Borg. Choose your series.
Install from your distribution’s packages, as a single-file binary, or via pip — the installation docs cover all of them.
Borg 1.4stable
The current stable series — the right choice for production use.
Borg 1.2oldstable
The previous stable series, still maintained.
Borg 2.0testing
Currently in testing — do not use it in production yet.
Borg 1.1, 1.0, 0.xxend of life
No longer supported — please use Borg 1.4.x or 1.2.x. The 0.xx development series (2015–2016) led up to Borg 1.0.
Borg’s future: milestones · projects — follow new releases via the atom feed.
support
You are not alone. It’s a collective.
Free community support. Please check the docs, the existing issues and the mailing list posts first — a lot of topics are already documented, explained, discussed and filed.
Documentation
Quite nice docs: installation, a reference for all Borg commands, examples and an FAQ, internals documentation, and docs for developers.
Issue tracker
Found a bug or have a concrete feature request? Create a ticket. For more general questions or discussions, prefer the chat or the mailing list.
Chat (IRC)
Join #borgbackup on libera.chat: just ask or tell directly, then patiently wait for replies — stay connected. A registered nick is preferred, and may even be required during times of high spam activity.
Matrix chat
Prefer Matrix? Use a client such as Element to join the #borgbackup room — it is bridged to the IRC channel, same people on both sides.
Mailing list
The list homepage explains its topic, how to subscribe or unsubscribe, and where to find the list archives.
Mastodon
Follow @borgbackup@fosstodon.org for announcements. Mastodon is not suitable for longer or more complex discussions — use one of the other channels for that.
live chat
Talk to the collective, right here.
The #borgbackup channel on libera.chat, embedded. This is libera.chat’s own web client (web.libera.chat), so you can join from this page without installing anything.
Join #borgbackup on libera.chat
Pick a nickname and you’re in. A registered nick is preferred, and may be required during times of high spam activity. Be patient after asking — people reply when they see it.
Loads web.libera.chat in a frame and connects you to the channel.
services
Paid support and services.
Commercial service and support providers for BorgBackup:
Waldmann EDV
BorgBackup consulting, support, and development — the company of Thomas Waldmann, Borg’s lead developer and maintainer.
fund
Resistance is futile. Donations are not.
Please help the software projects you use and love. You can support the BorgBackup project using these options:
PayPal
May be the easiest way (if you already use PayPal or a credit card) to directly support a specific developer. Waldmann EDV is the company of Thomas Waldmann, BorgBackup’s lead developer and maintainer.
Liberapay
Become a patron and support us regularly to help make the project sustainable in the long term. The funds are distributed to the BorgBackup team members — and as a BorgBackup developer, you can join the team.
GitHub Sponsors
Become a sponsor and support us regularly, or alternatively make a one-time donation. Those funds are transferred to Open Collective Europe (OC EU), our fiscal host.
Open Collective
Contribute directly via Open Collective; those funds also go to OC EU. The funds held on our behalf can be used to pay miscellaneous project-related expenses submitted by BorgBackup team members.
the collective
Trusted by sysadmins, hoarders and the merely paranoid.
Borg has protected production servers, research data and family photo archives for a decade. It is boring, in the best possible way.