BenchRank
#36 in Storage & CDNUpdated 2026-08

restic

by Restic · Open-source command-line backup tool for Linux, BSD, Mac and Windows

BenchRank score

32.9 — BenchRank score out of 100

Screenshots of restic

Homepage · restic

Homepage of restic

Overview

restic is a backup program that copies files from Linux, BSD, Mac and Windows to a range of storage types, including self-hosted and online services. It ships as a single executable that runs without a server, transfers only the parts of files that changed, and uses cryptography throughout. Backups can be verified so that restores are known to work.

Best for
People backing up Linux, BSD, Mac or Windows machines to self-hosted or online storage
Pricing
No prices are shown; the site states restic is entirely free to use and open source under the BSD 2-Clause License.
Runs on
Self-hosted

Strengths and trade-offs

Strengths

  • Single executable, no server or complex setup needed
  • Backs up Linux, BSD, Mac and Windows to many storage types
  • Only transfers the parts of files that actually changed
  • Free and open source under the BSD 2-Clause License

Trade-offs

  • Still pre-1.0, so breaking changes can land without a major bump
  • Support is community-run: forum, IRC and GitHub issues
  • Security reports go to one maintainer's personal email address

How restic markets itself

A structured read of the promise, proof and page design on restic’s captured homepage.

Homepage capture

“restic”

  • Angle: Craft / quality
  • Hero: Terminal / CLI

Pricing

Published plans and prices from restic’s own pricing page.

How this score is made up

Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.

  • MCP support

    Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.

  • API quality

    Public API surface: machine-readable spec, official SDKs, documented auth, errors, rate limits and versioning.

  • Documentation

    Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.

  • Agent friendliness

    How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.

  • Customer sentiment

    Third-party ratings, shrunk toward the catalogue mean by review volume and corroborated across independent sources.

  • Changelog

    A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.

  • Marketing site structure

    Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.

  • Page speed

    How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.

  • Operational trust

    Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.

Measured, but not part of the score

Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.

  • Openness

    Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.

  • Maintenance

    Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.

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Where this comes from

The restic pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.

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