Barman vs Databasus

Barman is an open-source Python administration tool for PostgreSQL disaster recovery, designed for organizations managing business-critical databases. It supports remote backups of multiple PostgreSQL servers and local or remote recovery, including point-in-time recovery. Backup management includes catalogs, incremental and parallel operations, retention policies, and WAL archiving or streaming. Synchronous WAL streaming supports zero data loss (RPO=0). Remote transfers can use rsync over SSH or pg_basebackup; recovery can run locally or over SSH. Barman integrates with PostgreSQL and standard archiving tools such as tar, and can compress WAL files with bzip2, gzip, or a custom method. GPG encryption for backups and WAL depends on configuration. Immutable storage is supported with a required grace period in the current implementation. Its experimental cloud-streaming method is limited to S3-compatible destinations and does not support encryption or direct restores in Barman. It runs on Linux and UNIX-like systems, uses an INI configuration file, and stores metadata locally. Barman costs nothing and is distributed under GPL-3.

Databasus is free, open-source, self-hosted database backup software for Linux and web deployment, with PostgreSQL as its primary focus. It also supports MySQL, MariaDB, and MongoDB. PostgreSQL workflows include logical backups, physical full and incremental backups, and WAL streaming for point-in-time recovery; physical, incremental, and WAL options require PostgreSQL 17 or newer. Schedules can run hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or through cron. Destinations include local storage, S3-compatible storage, Cloudflare R2, Google Drive, Azure Blob Storage, NAS, FTP, SFTP, and rclone. The service can periodically restore a recent backup in a temporary database container and report the result. It includes access management, teams, projects, and audit logs. Databasus says credentials and backup files use AES-256-GCM encryption, while database access is read-only with SELECT permissions. Installation supports a Linux script, Docker, Docker Compose, and Helm for Kubernetes. The Free, open-source software plan costs nothing under Apache 2.0 and includes all described features.