An XDA piece this month walked through backing up every device in the house to one central machine and setting the whole thing up in an evening. It matches how most homelab backup stories start: pick one always-on box, pick software that talks to every OS, and stop worrying. This is our short list of the best backup software apps for desktop that make that setup boring in the good way.
Every pick below handles versioned, deduplicated backups, most of them are free, and the paid ones are the paid ones for real reasons (agent-based restores, bare-metal images, hypervisor snapshots).
What to look for in desktop backup software
- Whether it stores versions or just the latest copy (versioning wins for ransomware and mistakes)
- Deduplication and compression, since a decade of backups shouldn’t need a decade of drives
- End-to-end encryption before data leaves the machine
- Restore tools that work when the source machine is gone, not just when it is fine
- Whether it targets local disks, a NAS, and cloud storage from the same job
Quick comparison
| App | Best for | Cost | Encryption | Restore-from-bare-metal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duplicati | Free versioned backups to any cloud | Free | End-to-end | File-level |
| Restic | Scripted, deduplicated, snapshot-based | Free | End-to-end | File-level |
| Kopia | Restic with a proper GUI | Free | End-to-end | File-level |
| BorgBackup | Fast dedup for Linux servers | Free | End-to-end | File-level |
| Veeam Agent | Full images and application-aware backups | Free personal, paid business | Optional | Yes |
| Macrium Reflect X | Windows full-disk imaging | Paid, from ~$75 one-off | Yes | Yes |
| Time Machine | Set-and-forget Mac backups | Free with macOS | Optional | Yes |
| rsync | The one every scripted setup starts with | Free | Via SSH | File-level |
The apps
1. Duplicati — best free versioned backups to any cloud
Duplicati is the go-to free backup client that talks to every major storage backend: local disks, SFTP, WebDAV, S3, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and more. Backups are encrypted before they leave the machine, deduplicated, and versioned, and the web UI runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux the same way.
Where it falls short: Restore of very large sets can be slower than Restic or Kopia. The 2.x builds are labelled beta but have been production-quality for years.
Pricing:
- Free, open source under LGPL.
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux.
Download: duplicati.com · GitHub
Bottom line: The right first pick for a mixed-OS household backing up to a NAS and a cloud bucket in the same job.
2. Restic — best scripted, deduplicated, snapshot-based
Restic is the tool the homelab crowd trusts once they outgrow a GUI. Snapshots dedupe across every machine that shares a repo, backups run over SFTP, S3, B2, and REST, and prune policies keep decades of history readable. The command line is small enough to memorize in a week.
Where it falls short: Command-line first. Restore of a single file from a big repo is snappy; restore of everything at once is slower than an image-based tool.
Pricing:
- Free, open source under BSD.
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD.
Download: restic.net · Package: brew install restic / apt install restic
Bottom line: The right pick when your backups live in a Git-adjacent world of shell scripts and cron.
3. Kopia — best Restic with a proper GUI
Kopia has the same conceptual model as Restic (deduplicated, encrypted, snapshot-based) with a modern desktop UI and a maintenance loop that runs on schedule. Repositories cost nothing to set up, and the client covers local disks, SFTP, WebDAV, S3, B2, GCS, Azure, and rclone.
Where it falls short: Slightly younger ecosystem than Restic. UI hides some knobs that scripted tools expose.
Pricing:
- Free, open source.
Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux.
Download: kopia.io
Bottom line: The right pick when you want Restic’s guarantees with a real UI you can hand a family member.
4. BorgBackup — best fast dedup for Linux servers
BorgBackup is the Linux server default for deduplicated, encrypted backups. It runs over SSH to a Borg-aware host, dedupes at the chunk level (so a 500 GB VM backup takes the disk space of the differences), and prunes on flexible retention rules. Vorta on the desktop wraps it in a GTK/Qt GUI when you want one.
Where it falls short: Server-side needs Borg installed too (hence “Borg-aware host”). Windows is macOS not a first-class client.
Pricing:
- Free, open source.
Platforms: Linux, macOS, BSD (Windows via WSL).
Download: borgbackup.org · GUI: vorta.borgbase.com
Bottom line: The right pick when your backup target and your backup source are both Linux and both yours.
5. Veeam Agent — best full images and application-aware backups
Veeam Agent brings the enterprise backup stack to a single desktop for free. It handles full-disk images, incremental snapshots, application-aware backups (Exchange, SQL Server on Windows), and restore to different hardware from a Veeam Recovery Media USB stick.
Where it falls short: UI is enterprise-flavoured. Full Veeam Backup & Replication server is the paid tier.
Pricing:
- Free for personal use.
- Business tiers on Veeam Data Platform.
Platforms: Windows, Linux, macOS.
Download: veeam.com/products/free/agent
Bottom line: The right pick when the machine matters enough that “restore to different hardware” has to work on the first try.
6. Macrium Reflect X — best Windows full-disk imaging
Macrium Reflect X is the current successor to the long-standing Macrium Reflect free tier (which was discontinued for personal use). It images an entire Windows disk in a couple of hours, restores to different hardware via ReDeploy, and mounts old backups as a virtual drive for one-file rescues.
Where it falls short: Paid-only now. Windows-only.
Pricing:
- Home from around $75 one-off, upgrade licences from around $35.
Platforms: Windows.
Download: macrium.com
Bottom line: The right pick for a Windows machine that has to be restorable exactly as it was, not just file-by-file.
7. Time Machine — best set-and-forget Mac backups
Time Machine ships with macOS, talks to any external drive or Time Machine-capable NAS, and does versioned hourly backups without configuration beyond picking a target. Restoring a single file from last month is a right-click; restoring a whole Mac to a new machine is a step in the setup wizard.
Where it falls short: Mac-only. Backup targets are less flexible than Duplicati or Kopia. Older Time Capsule hardware is being retired.
Pricing:
- Free with macOS.
Platforms: macOS.
Download: Built into macOS: System Settings → General → Time Machine.
Bottom line: The right pick for a Mac. Do not overthink it. Add a Duplicati offsite job on top if you also want cloud coverage.
8. rsync — best of the one every scripted setup starts with
rsync is not versioned backup, it is efficient sync. Combined with --link-dest it becomes hard-linked snapshot backups that behave a lot like Time Machine, and it is the transport under half the other tools on this list. On a Linux or macOS box, an rsync-over-SSH job with a retention wrapper is still one of the cheapest reliable backups you can run.
Where it falls short: No dedup, no encryption at rest (encrypt the target instead), no built-in retention (add a wrapper like rsnapshot).
Pricing:
- Free, open source.
Platforms: Linux, macOS, BSD, Windows (via WSL or cwRsync).
Download: Package rsync on Linux and macOS. Wrapper: rsnapshot.org
Bottom line: The right pick when the environment is already scripted and you want a boring, well-understood tool that will still work in a decade.
How to pick the right one
If you want one GUI backup client for a mixed-OS home: Duplicati.
If you want deduplicated snapshots on a script: Restic, or Kopia if you also want a GUI.
If your fleet is Linux-first and lives on SSH: BorgBackup or rsync with rsnapshot.
If you need bare-metal restore for a Windows box: Macrium Reflect X, or Veeam Agent for free.
If it is a Mac and you own an external drive: Time Machine, done.
FAQ
What is the best free backup software for Windows in 2026?
Veeam Agent for a bare-metal image, Duplicati or Kopia for versioned file backups to a NAS or cloud, and Restic for a scripted setup.
Do these tools work with a Synology or TrueNAS target?
Yes. Duplicati and Kopia support SFTP and WebDAV, which most NAS boxes expose. Restic and BorgBackup use SSH to a repo directory. Veeam Agent supports SMB and NFS shares.
Can I use these to back up to Backblaze B2 or S3?
Duplicati, Restic, Kopia, and Veeam Agent all target S3-compatible object storage and Backblaze B2 directly. Encrypt at the client, retention on the server.
Is Time Machine enough on its own?
For a single Mac with one external drive, yes for local restores. For an offsite copy, pair Time Machine with Duplicati or Restic pushing to a cloud bucket.
How do I test that my backups actually work?
Restore a random file to a scratch folder once a month, and once a year restore a full snapshot to a spare drive or a VM. Every tool on this list supports both.
