Kopia — Cross-Platform Backup Tool with Encryption, Compression, and a Polished UI

What it is

Kopia is a modern open-source backup tool that provides Borg-style deduplication, encryption, and compression with support for cloud storage backends including S3, GCS, Azure Blob, Backblaze B2, WebDAV, and SFTP. It includes a polished web UI for managing snapshots.

Kopia targets sysadmins, developers, and homelab users who need reliable encrypted backups without the complexity of enterprise backup solutions. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows with identical functionality across platforms.

The project is actively maintained and suitable for both individual developers and teams looking to integrate it into their existing toolchain. Documentation and community support are available for onboarding.

How it saves time or tokens

Kopia's content-addressable storage and deduplication reduce backup size by only storing unique data blocks across all snapshots. Incremental backups complete in seconds for unchanged files. The web UI lets you browse snapshots, restore individual files, and monitor backup health without memorizing CLI flags.

For teams evaluating multiple tools in the same category, the clear documentation and active community reduce the time spent on research and troubleshooting. Getting started takes minutes rather than hours of configuration.

How to use

1. Install Kopia via your package manager or download from the official releases.
2. Create a repository on your chosen storage backend (kopia repository create s3 --bucket my-backups).
3. Create snapshots of directories (kopia snapshot create /home/user/documents).
4. Schedule automatic backups with kopia policy set or use the web UI scheduler.

Example

# Create a repository on S3
kopia repository create s3 \
  --bucket my-kopia-backups \
  --access-key AKIAEXAMPLE \
  --secret-access-key SECRET \
  --password 'repository-encryption-password'

# Snapshot a directory
kopia snapshot create /home/user/projects

# List snapshots
kopia snapshot list

# Restore a specific snapshot
kopia restore kffbb7c28ea6c34d6cbe555d1cf80faa9 /tmp/restore/

# Start the web UI
kopia server start --insecure --address 0.0.0.0:51515

Related on TokRepo

• AI Tools for DevOps — Backup and infrastructure management tools.
• AI Tools for Self-Hosted — Self-hosted solutions for data management.

Common pitfalls

• Not testing restore procedures. Backups are worthless if you cannot restore from them. Periodically test restoring files from your Kopia repository.
• Using weak repository passwords. The encryption is only as strong as your password. Use a long passphrase and store it in a password manager.
• Forgetting to set retention policies. Without policies, old snapshots accumulate and consume storage indefinitely. Configure kopia policy set to automatically expire old snapshots.
• Not reading the changelog before upgrading. Breaking changes between versions can cause unexpected failures in production. Pin your version and review release notes.