# Restic vs Kopia: 2026 Empirical Benchmark & Cost Shootout

> **Direct Answer (October 2026 Verdict)**: Restic wins for single-binary Go simplicity, battle-tested cloud object storage streaming (S3, B2, Wasabi), and zero daemon requirements across 36.7k+ GitHub stars (99.4), while Kopia wins for built-in ZSTD compression, native cross-platform GUI, and multi-user repository server mode across 14.4k+ GitHub stars (99.1).

- **Category**: Authenticated AES-256 S3 Cloud Backup vs Multi-Platform ZSTD Snapshot Engine Shootout
- **Canonical URL**: https://exactbaseline.com/vs/restic-vs-kopia
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## Restic Key Advantages
- 36,715+ GitHub stars under BSD-2-Clause as the premier Go backup program with content-defined chunking
- Directly backs up to AWS S3, MinIO, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, SFTP, and REST backends with end-to-end AES-256 encryption
- Cuts commercial Veeam and Commvault invoices by 96.1% ($95/mo self-hosted cloud storage vs $2,450/mo SaaS)

## Kopia Key Advantages
- 14,402+ GitHub stars under Apache-2.0 featuring native content-addressable storage with ZSTD compression
- Includes both high-throughput CLI and native desktop GUI for macOS, Windows, and Linux fleets
- Multi-user repository server mode allows centralized policy management and TLS-authenticated client backups