Duplicati — Free Encrypted Backup to Any Cloud Storage

What it is

Duplicati is a free, open-source backup client that creates encrypted, incremental, compressed backups and stores them on remote storage. It supports over 20 backends including Amazon S3, Google Drive, OneDrive, Backblaze B2, SFTP, WebDAV, and local drives. The software runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux with a web-based UI for configuration.

Duplicati targets developers, sysadmins, and home users who need automated, encrypted backups without paying for a commercial backup service. If you want your data backed up to storage you already own or rent, Duplicati handles the encryption and scheduling.

How it saves time or tokens

Setting up encrypted incremental backups manually requires scripting rsync, gpg, and cron together while handling error recovery and retention policies. Duplicati packages all of this into a single application with a web UI. You configure a backup job once -- source folders, destination, schedule, retention -- and it runs unattended. Block-level deduplication means subsequent backups transfer only changed data.

How to use

1. Run Duplicati with Docker:

docker run -d --name duplicati -p 8200:8200 \
  -v duplicati-config:/data \
  -v /path/to/backup:/source:ro \
  lscr.io/linuxserver/duplicati:latest

1. Open http://localhost:8200 in your browser.

1. Create a new backup job: select source folders, choose a destination (S3, Google Drive, etc.), set encryption passphrase, and configure schedule.

1. Run the backup manually or let the schedule handle it.

Example

# Command-line backup to Backblaze B2
duplicati-cli backup \
  "b2://my-bucket/backups?auth-username=keyId&auth-password=appKey" \
  /home/user/documents \
  --passphrase="your-encryption-passphrase" \
  --retention-policy="1W:1D,4W:1W,12M:1M"

# Restore specific files
duplicati-cli restore \
  "b2://my-bucket/backups" \
  --restore-path=/tmp/restored \
  --file-to-restore="documents/important.pdf"

Related on TokRepo

• Self-Hosted Solutions -- Self-hosted tools for infrastructure and data management
• Security Tools -- Tools for data protection and encryption

Common pitfalls

• Losing your encryption passphrase means losing access to all backups permanently. Store the passphrase in a password manager or secure vault.
• Large initial backups over slow connections can take days. Consider seeding with a local backup first, then switching to cloud.
• Duplicati stores metadata in a local SQLite database. If this database is lost, rebuilding from remote storage works but takes significant time.