duplicacy
Backup and restore data incrementally
TLDR
Use current directory as the repository, initialize a SFTP storage and encrypt the storage with a password
Save a snapshot of the repository to the default storage
List snapshots of current repository
Restore the repository to a previously saved snapshot
Check the integrity of snapshots
Add another storage to be used for the existing repository
Prune a specific revision of snapshot
Prune revisions, keeping one revision every n days for all revisions older than m days
SYNOPSIS
duplicacy [global-options] <command> [command-options]
PARAMETERS
-log <max-level>
Set max logging level (0=errors, 5=debug)
-stats
Print detailed backup/restore statistics
-dry-run
Simulate without writing to storage
-v
Verbose mode (sets -log 3)
-vv
More verbose (-log 4)
-vvv
Debug mode (-log 5)
-threads <n>
Number of worker threads (default 6)
-all
Process all repositories in .duplicacy-web
-log-file <file>
Append logs to specified file
-exclude <glob>
Exclude files matching glob pattern
-exclude-if-present <file>
Exclude dir if marker file exists
-filter <filter>
Custom include/exclude filter
DESCRIPTION
Duplicacy is a fast, efficient backup utility featuring lock-free deduplication and content-defined chunking for incremental backups. It enables multiple clients to back up concurrently to the same storage without locks, using multi-threaded processing for high performance. Supports diverse backends: local filesystems, SFTP, WebDAV, S3-compatible (AWS, Wasabi, Backblaze), Dropbox, Google Drive, Azure Blob, and more.
Key strengths include client-side encryption (AES-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305), compression (LZ4, Zstd), and bandwidth throttling. Backups are snapshot-based with revisions; revisions share chunks to minimize storage. No garbage collection needed as pruning reuses space.
Workflow: Initialize a repository with duplicacy init, then backup, check integrity, prune old snapshots, or restore. Ideal for servers, NAS, desktops. CLI-focused with web GUI option. Cross-platform (Linux, macOS, Windows). Free and open-source.
CAVEATS
Must run duplicacy init first to set up repository.
Remote backends need credentials in ~/.duplicacy-web/repositories/config.
High CPU/RAM use during chunking on large filesystems.
No built-in scheduling; use cron/systemd.
MAIN SUBCOMMANDS
init <storage-url> <id>
backup [-v] [-stats]
restore <revision> [<dir>]
check [-reset] [-chunks]
prune -all keep 7:30d 14:180d
copy -from-repo <to>
list [-files]
STORAGE EXAMPLES
s3://bucket/path://key:secret@region
wasabi://bucket/path://access:secret@us-east-1
sftp://user@host/path
webdav://host/path
/local/path
HISTORY
Developed by Gilbert Chen since 2014 as response to limitations in tools like restic/borg. Initial release 2015; GitHub repo 2017. Evolved to v3.x with WebDAV/S3 support, encryption v2. Widely used for cloud backups; CLI remains free/open-source.
