Proxmox Backup Server is the boring upgrade everyone we know seems to make right after their first restore-from-snapshot scare. Dedicated PBS node, ZFS pool, daily incrementals, weekly verify, and the Proxmox VE side stops carrying the weight of its own backups. That’s a real improvement over backing up to a USB drive. The honest read though is that PBS isn’t the only sensible target for VM, container, and bare-metal backups, and a few of its rough edges (small ecosystem, no agent-based file backup, Debian-only host) push people toward other stacks. These are the seven Proxmox Backup Server alternatives we keep in rotation for home labs and small business racks.
Quick comparison
| Backup target | Best for | Free tier | Starting price | Standout |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Veeam Backup & Replication Community | Mixed VMware and Hyper-V shops | Free up to 10 workloads | From about $1,200/yr/socket | First-class hypervisor support |
| Bareos | Bacula users who want active forks | Fully free | Subscription support from about €1,000/yr | Network backup with proper tape support |
| BorgBackup | Encrypted, deduplicated file backup | Fully free | None | Compression and dedup that holds up at 10 TB |
| Restic | Cloud-first encrypted backups | Fully free | None | Object-store backends without extra glue |
| UrBackup | Mixed file and image backup of clients | Fully free | None | Image backups of Windows desktops on a schedule |
| Duplicati | Desktop users with cloud accounts | Fully free | None | Friendly UI, B2 / S3 / Drive backends |
| Vinchin Backup & Recovery | KVM, Proxmox, oVirt, and XCP-ng | Free 60-day trial | From about $900/yr per host | Agentless backup of many hypervisors |
Why people leave Proxmox Backup Server
PBS works, and we keep using it. The complaints are real, though.
It only knows VMs and containers. PBS is built around Proxmox VE’s vzdump format. If you also want to back up a Windows laptop, a NAS share, or a bare-metal Linux box, you need a second tool. Veeam, UrBackup, and Bareos each do that out of the box.
The web UI is utilitarian. Datastore creation, namespaces, garbage collection, and verify jobs are all there, but they’re spread across half a dozen tabs. People used to Veeam’s dashboards or Vinchin’s wizards find PBS terse.
No native agent for file-level backup of physical hosts. PBS will back up a guest, including its filesystem, but it has no equivalent of a Veeam Agent or UrBackup client that lives on a workstation and pushes file changes.
Object-store targets are second-class. PBS supports S3-compatible object storage in recent releases, but garbage collection and verify are slower and cost more API calls than equivalents in Restic or Veeam.
The host is Debian. Some shops want to run their backup target on a different base distribution, or on Windows. PBS does not give that choice; Vinchin and Veeam do.
The alternatives
Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition — Best for mixed-hypervisor shops
Veeam Community Edition covers up to 10 workloads (VMs or physical machines combined) for free, with no time limit. The Community build runs on Windows or Hyper-V hosts, supports VMware vSphere, Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, Proxmox VE (added in 2024), and physical machines through Veeam Agent. Application-aware processing for SQL, Exchange, and Oracle still works in the free edition.
Where it falls short: Ten workloads is fine for a home lab and tight for a small office. The licensed tier jumps significantly in price, and the management console is Windows-only. Veeam is also a Microsoft-leaning ecosystem, which can be friction in a Linux-first shop.
Pricing:
- Free: up to 10 workloads, no time limit
- Paid: from roughly $1,200/year/socket for licensed tiers
- vs PBS: broader scope, easier dashboards, smaller free ceiling
Migrating from PBS: Add the Proxmox VE host as a managed source, point at a repository, and let Veeam pull. Existing PBS chains stay where they are.
Bottom line: Pick Veeam Community if the lab is mixed hypervisor or includes physical Windows hosts.
Bareos — Best for traditional network backup with tape
Bareos is the active fork of Bacula. It’s a Director / Storage / File daemon architecture that has been backing up enterprise networks since the 1990s and still does, often onto LTO tape libraries. Linux, Windows, macOS, FreeBSD, and Solaris clients all exist. Job definitions live in configuration files that survive upgrades cleanly.
Where it falls short: Configuration is text-file heavy. The web UI is functional but does not hide the underlying model. Tape, while supported, is the area Bareos shines in, which is not most home labs.
Pricing:
- Free: AGPL, open-source forever
- Paid: Bareos GmbH subscription support from about €1,000/year
- vs PBS: broader OS coverage, far steeper learning curve
Bottom line: Pick Bareos when the requirement is “every server we own, on tape, forever”. Otherwise this is more tool than the room needs.
BorgBackup — Best for encrypted, deduplicated file backup
Borg deduplicates at the chunk level and compresses with zstd. A daily backup of a 200 GB server typically adds tens of megabytes to the repository when nothing important changed. Encryption is mandatory in the default config and uses authenticated AES-CTR.
Where it falls short: Borg is a file-level tool. Backing up a running VM means an LVM or ZFS snapshot first, then a Borg run. There is no built-in scheduler (cron or systemd timers do that work) and no GUI; Vorta and Pika Backup are unofficial front-ends.
Pricing:
- Free: BSD-licensed
- Paid: none directly; managed Borg targets from BorgBase or rsync.net
- vs PBS: very different scope; Borg backs up files, PBS backs up VMs
Bottom line: Run Borg for the host filesystems and let PBS or Veeam keep handling the VMs.
Restic — Best for cloud object-store targets
Restic was designed for “backup to S3 and forget”. The single binary speaks to S3, Backblaze B2, Azure Blob, Google Cloud Storage, REST server, SFTP, and local disk with the same command line. Encryption and dedup are built in.
Where it falls short: Like Borg, Restic is a file-level tool. Restore is slow for large repositories, and there is no built-in UI; backrest and Autorestic add scheduling. Garbage collection (prune) needs careful scheduling on large repos.
Pricing:
- Free: BSD-licensed
- Paid: none directly
- vs PBS: object-store fluency is much better; VM awareness is none
Bottom line: Pair Restic with PBS when off-site, encrypted, cheap object storage is the goal.
UrBackup — Best for mixed file and image backup of clients
UrBackup is a client-server backup that does both file backups and full image backups of Windows clients. The server runs on Linux, Windows, or FreeBSD. Clients exist for Windows, Linux, and macOS. Image backups use Volume Shadow Copy on Windows for crash-consistent restores.
Where it falls short: Image backups are Windows-only. Deduplication is btrfs- or ZFS-based, which means the storage layer matters more than with Borg or Restic. The web UI is functional rather than pretty.
Pricing:
- Free: AGPL
- Paid: none
- vs PBS: covers physical clients well; weaker on virtualized guests
Bottom line: Pick UrBackup when the network has more laptops than VMs.
Duplicati — Best for desktop users with cloud accounts
Duplicati packages an encrypted, incremental, deduplicated backup tool inside a friendly tray app. The backends list is the longest in this comparison: S3, B2, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Mega, pCloud, SFTP, WebDAV, and dozens more.
Where it falls short: The 2.x branch is still labeled beta after years of work, and database corruption has historically been the failure mode. Performance on very large repositories (multi-TB) is below Borg and Restic.
Pricing:
- Free: LGPL
- Paid: none
- vs PBS: very different audience; PBS is a server, Duplicati is a desktop client
Bottom line: Use Duplicati on a household Windows or Mac machine when a tray icon is required.
Vinchin Backup & Recovery — Best for multi-hypervisor agentless backup
Vinchin is a commercial backup that targets the hypervisors PBS doesn’t (and a few it does). It is agentless for KVM, Proxmox VE, oVirt, XCP-ng, OpenStack, and VMware, with a single web console covering all of them. Instant recovery, granular file restore, and database-aware backup of MySQL and SQL Server are included.
Where it falls short: It is a paid product with no permanently free tier beyond the 60-day trial. It runs as an appliance VM, so the resource floor is roughly 4 vCPU and 8 GB RAM.
Pricing:
- Free: 60-day trial
- Paid: from about $900/year per host
- vs PBS: similar VM focus, much broader hypervisor coverage, paid
Bottom line: Pick Vinchin when the rack runs Proxmox, oVirt, and XCP-ng side by side.
How to choose
Pick Veeam Community if your network is mixed hypervisor or physical Windows and ten workloads is enough.
Pick BorgBackup for host filesystems on Linux and macOS, paired with PBS for the VM layer.
Pick Restic when the off-site target is S3-compatible object storage and dedup at rest is the requirement.
Pick UrBackup when the network is mostly laptops and desktops that need scheduled image backup.
Stay on Proxmox Backup Server if Proxmox VE is the only hypervisor and dedicated VM-aware dedup is what the rack needs.
FAQ
Is Proxmox Backup Server free?
Yes, fully free under AGPLv3. The Proxmox enterprise repository requires a paid subscription, but the no-subscription repository and the AGPL source give you the same software.
Can Veeam Community Edition back up a Proxmox VE host?
Yes. Veeam added Proxmox VE as a supported source in 2024. Community Edition counts each Proxmox VM toward the ten-workload limit.
Does BorgBackup or Restic deduplicate across multiple hosts?
Yes, when they target the same repository with the same encryption key. Two laptops backing up to one Borg repo will share chunks for any identical file content.
What is the best free Proxmox Backup Server alternative for VMs?
Veeam Community Edition for mixed hypervisor labs, Vinchin’s 60-day trial for evaluation, or Bareos with its KVM plugin for fully open-source setups.
Can I combine these with PBS?
Yes, and we do. Most of our labs run PBS for VM-level backups and Restic or Borg for off-site, encrypted copies of the PBS datastore itself.
