Duplicati vs Backblaze Personal Backup: Is a Self-Hosted, Open Source Family Backup to a Home Server and B2 Worth It?

Description and use

Choosing between self‑hosted, open‑source Duplicati and commercial Backblaze Personal Backup for a household with multiple laptops and a home server lets families replace multiple subscriptions with a single storage bill, keep encryption keys locally, and speed up local restores.

Problem

Choosing between a self‑hosted, open‑source backup solution (Duplicati) and a commercial, subscription‑based service (Backblaze Personal Backup) for a household with multiple laptops and a desire for local and off‑site copies.

Outcome

Replacing per‑computer Backblaze subscriptions with a single Duplicati setup to a home server and B2 reduces costs, centralizes encryption control, and speeds local restores, while still maintaining an off‑site copy.

Workflow

• Install Duplicati on each laptop
• Configure a backup job to a home server via SFTP or SMB
• Configure a second job to Backblaze B2
• Set retention rules and encryption passphrase
• Monitor backup reports locally
• Restore from local server for quick recovery
• Restore from B2 via web portal when needed

Evidence

Duplicati is a free, open source backup client. It splits your files into blocks, deduplicates them, compresses them, encrypts them with AES-256 and uploads them to a storage destination you choose.

Source

Backblaze Personal Backup is a commercial service. You install the client on a computer, it scans the drive, and it uploads everything to Backblaze's own data centres.

Source

With Duplicati, encryption happens on the laptop before anything leaves it. You set a passphrase for each backup job, and Duplicati encrypts every block with AES-256, or with GPG if you prefer.

Source

Backblaze Personal Backup charges you every month to take responsibility for the backups, while Duplicati is free and leaves that responsibility with you.

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