Compare Borg vs. Kopia

BorgBackup, often referred to as Borg, is a deduplicating archiver that incorporates both compression and encryption features, ensuring space-efficient backup storage. It employs secure and authenticated encryption methods, alongside various compression algorithms such as LZ4, zlib, LZMA, and zstd (available since version 1.1.4). Additionally, users can mount backups using FUSE, and it offers straightforward installation across multiple operating systems, including Linux, macOS, and BSD. Released under the BSD license, Borg is free software supported by a vibrant and dedicated open-source community. This tool optionally enables both compression and authenticated encryption, with its primary goal being to deliver a secure and efficient data backup solution. By utilizing a data deduplication technique, Borg is especially well-suited for daily backups, as it only stores changes made since the last backup. The use of authenticated encryption ensures that it can be safely used for backups to locations that may not be fully trusted. A unique aspect of Borg is its content-defined chunking method for deduplication, which minimizes stored bytes by splitting files into variable-length chunks and only adding new chunks to the repository. The combination of these features makes Borg a powerful tool for users seeking reliable and efficient data protection.

Kopia features a robust and adaptable architecture, enabling it to back up a wide range of devices, from small laptops to extensive server systems. As a fast and secure open-source tool for backup and restoration, Kopia efficiently manages filesystem snapshots stored in a remote location. It uploads files and directories to a designated remote storage known as a Repository, while also keeping a historical record of snapshots at various points in time, all governed by user-defined policies. Each snapshot is generated incrementally, ensuring that data already captured in previous snapshots is not re-uploaded to the repository, thus optimizing storage efficiency. In fact, when files are moved or renamed, Kopia adeptly identifies that they contain the same data, eliminating the need for redundant uploads. Furthermore, multiple users or devices can access the same repository, ensuring that shared files are only uploaded once, conserving bandwidth and storage resources. For data restoration, Kopia allows users to mount the Repository's contents as a local disk, facilitating the use of standard file copy tools for either complete or selective restoration of data, making the process user-friendly and efficient. This unique approach to backup and restoration emphasizes both efficiency and ease of use across diverse computing environments.