git-annex vs Quilt
git-annex
git-annex.branchable.comQuilt
quilt.bioSide by side
| Figure | git-annex | Quilt |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | $312.50/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 4 |
| Spec score · Data Version Control Tools | 8.7 (#5) | 7.4 (#30) |
| Audience | The project describes git-annex as designed for git users who love the command line. | Quilt describes its platform as built for life sciences teams, including computational biology and connected lab use cases. |
| Encryption | Encrypted special remotes support hybrid, shared, public-key and shared-public-key modes, but encryption is generally disabled unless configured. | The security page says objects are encrypted with customer AWS KMS keys and connections use TLS. |
| Integrations | Documented service recipes cover Amazon S3 and Glacier, Backblaze B2, Dropbox, Google Cloud Storage, Google Drive, Azure, OneDrive, ownCloud and others. | The integrations page describes bi-directional sync with Benchling and integrations with Nextflow and Ganymede for pipeline and instrument data. |
| Purpose | git-annex manages large files with git while keeping their contents outside git. | Quilt is a data management and governance platform that turns scientific data in Amazon S3 into versioned, governed packages teams can find, trust, and reproduce. |
| Support | The official site provides a user forum and a contact page. | The pricing page lists Enterprise Support, Priority implementation support, and Premium Support on progressively higher plans. |
Plans
Quilt
- Enterprise+$312.50 a month
- Enterprise Scale$425 a month
- Enterprise$625 a month
- Startup$750 a month
In their own words
git-annex
git-annex manages large files alongside Git while keeping file contents outside Git itself. Git tracks filenames and metadata, while git-annex stores contents in a distributed store across repository clones. It can synchronize, back up, and archive data online or offline, and it can resume interrupted transfers. The assistant can create a synchronized folder spanning computers, Android devices, removable drives, NAS appliances, and cloud services. Built-in special remotes include S3, Glacier, rclone, rsync, web, WebDAV, and Android adb. Encrypted remotes can protect file contents and use HMAC hashing for filenames, though the project says encryption is mostly not enabled by default. The project describes git-annex as intended for Git users who like command-line work. File size is limited by the filesystem; repositories with hundreds of thousands of files are supported, while larger repositories may slow down due to Git limitations. It is free software, with installation methods listed for Linux distributions, macOS, Android, and Windows. The project explicitly says it is not a backup system, though it can contribute to archival or backup workflows.