{"id":5170,"date":"2026-03-19T20:48:32","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T03:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=5170"},"modified":"2026-03-19T20:48:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T03:48:32","slug":"vykar-is-a-new-open-source-backup-tool-thats-faster-than-borg-restic-and-kopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=5170","title":{"rendered":"Vykar is a New Open Source Backup Tool That&#x27;s Faster Than Borg, Restic, and Kopia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you want to backup your data on Linux, there&#8217;s no shortage of reliable options that offer some pretty good functionality. We have <a href=\"https:\/\/apps.gnome.org\/DejaDup\/\">D\u00e9j\u00e0 Dup<\/a> that handles the basics well if you just want a simple GNOME app that protects your files without much fuss. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/backup-restore-linux-timeshift\/\">Timeshift<\/a> takes a different angle; it snapshots your system so you can roll back after a bad update, though it&#8217;s not really designed for personal data backups.<\/p>\n<p>For users who want more control, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.borgbackup.org\/\">Borg<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/restic.net\/\">Restic<\/a> have been the standards for years. Both are encrypted, deduplicated, and trusted by a vast community of Linux users.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.borgbase.com\/\">BorgBase<\/a>, on the other hand, is a managed repository hosting service for Borg and Restic backups that has been around for almost a decade. <a href=\"https:\/\/vykar.borgbase.com\/\" rel=\"noreferrer\">Vykar<\/a> is their newest project\u2014an open source encrypted backup tool that&#8217;s worth a look if you&#8217;re in the market for something new.<\/p>\n<div class=\"kg-card kg-callout-card kg-callout-card-red\">\n<div class=\"kg-callout-emoji\">\ud83d\udea7<\/div>\n<div class=\"kg-callout-text\">This tool is not recommended for production use by the developers; proceed with care.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Vykar: Overview \u2b50<\/h2>\n<figure class=\"kg-card kg-image-card\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/content\/images\/2026\/03\/vykar-desktop-gui.png\" class=\"kg-image\" alt=\"two app windows showcase the vykar backup solution in this picture\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1108\" height=\"773\" \/><\/figure>\n<p>Vykar is <strong>an open source, encrypted, deduplicated backup tool written in Rust<\/strong>, developed by the BorgBase team, and released under the GPL-3.0 license. It draws inspiration from the likes of BorgBackup and <a href=\"https:\/\/torsion.org\/borgmatic\/\">Borgmatic<\/a> but uses its own repository format, making it incompatible with existing Borg or Restic repositories.<\/p>\n<p>The whole thing is configured through a single <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/YAML\">YAML<\/a> file where you define your repositories, source directories, encryption settings, and retention policy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Key features<\/strong> include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Scheduling via <code>vykar daemon<\/code>.<\/li>\n<li>Deduplication is doable via FastCDC.<\/li>\n<li>Compression support with LZ4 or Zstandard.<\/li>\n<li>Desktop GUI (<code>vykar-gui<\/code>) with system tray support.<\/li>\n<li>WebDAV server for browsing and restoring snapshots.<\/li>\n<li>Encryption with AES-256-GCM or ChaCha20-Poly1305 (auto-selected), and Argon2id key derivation.<\/li>\n<li>Concurrent multi-client backups, where multiple machines can write to the same backup repository at the same time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The desktop GUI deserves a particular mention. Borg relies on third-party tools like Vorta for a desktop interface, and Restic has Backrest, which is also a community project. Vykar ships its own GUI as a first-party component.<\/p>\n<p>It reads directly from <code>vykar.yaml<\/code>, runs backups on demand, and can sit in the system tray running scheduled backups in the background.<\/p>\n<p><strong>As for the performance<\/strong>, the project&#8217;s website has put up a comparison of Vykar against Borg, Restic, Rustic, and <a href=\"https:\/\/kopia.io\/\">Kopia<\/a>, tested against a 49 GiB dataset of 367,000 files.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"kg-card kg-image-card\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/content\/images\/2026\/03\/vykar-benchmark.png\" class=\"kg-image\" alt=\"there are four charts that show benchmark results for vykar, pitching it against other backup solutions like restic, rustic, borg, and kopia\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1224\" height=\"842\" \/><\/figure>\n<div class=\"kg-card kg-callout-card kg-callout-card-blue\">\n<div class=\"kg-callout-emoji\">\ud83d\udccb<\/div>\n<div class=\"kg-callout-text\">These are benchmarks run and published by the Vykar team, not an independent party.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>On backup duration, Vykar finished in 61 seconds, Rustic took 313, Borg 268, Restic 138, and Kopia 85. Restore times follow a similar pattern where Vykar does it in 69 seconds, versus 82 for Rustic, 225 for Borg, 130 for Restic, and 132 for Kopia.<\/p>\n<p>CPU efficiency shows the clearest gap. Vykar used 234 CPU seconds for backup, compared to Borg&#8217;s 250, Restic&#8217;s 696, Rustic&#8217;s 728, and Kopia&#8217;s 428.<\/p>\n<p>Memory usage is where the picture gets more interesting. Borg uses just 236 MB during backup versus Vykar&#8217;s 623 MB. Restic is also lighter at 327 MB. So Vykar is trading some RAM for its speed advantage. This is something to factor in on memory-constrained systems.<\/p>\n<p>Repository sizes across all five tools land between 19.7 and 19.9 GB under equivalent Zstd compression settings, so deduplication efficiency is roughly comparable across the board.<\/p>\n<h2>Get Vykar \ud83d\udce5<\/h2>\n<p>Before you install, know that Vykar supports four storage backends: the local filesystem, S3-compatible object storage (<em>any provider works<\/em>), SFTP, and a dedicated REST server.<\/p>\n<p>The installation itself is a one-liner:<\/p>\n<pre><code>curl -fsSL https:\/\/vykar.borgbase.com\/install.sh | sh<\/code><\/pre>\n<p>Pre-built binaries for <strong>Linux<\/strong> (<em>x86_64 and aarch64, both glibc and musl<\/em>), <strong>macOS<\/strong> (<em>Apple Silicon<\/em>), and <strong>Windows<\/strong> are also available on the <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/borgbase\/vykar\/releases\">GitHub releases page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>From there, you can refer to <a href=\"https:\/\/vykar.borgbase.com\/quickstart\">the quickstart guide<\/a> for going through the creation of a config file and initializing the backup process.<\/p>\n<div class=\"kg-card kg-button-card kg-align-center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/vykar.borgbase.com\/\" class=\"kg-btn kg-btn-accent\">Vykar<\/a><\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/feed.itsfoss.com\/link\/24361\/17302389.gif\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\" \/><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you want to backup your data on Linux, there&#8217;s no shortage of reliable options that offer some pretty good functionality. We have D\u00e9j\u00e0 Dup that handles the basics well&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}