mariadb-backup vs WAL-G

mariadb-backup is a free, open-source tool for physical backups of MariaDB tables, including while the server is running. Available on Linux and Windows for self-hosted deployments, it supports InnoDB, Aria, MyISAM, and MyRocks. Backup options include full, incremental, and partial copies, point-in-time recovery, and restoration of individual databases, tables, or partitions. It can make hot online InnoDB backups and uses a nearly non-blocking method for full backups on running systems. It also supports Galera Cluster state snapshot transfers, InnoDB page-compressed tables, and tables protected by data-at-rest encryption; encrypted tables stay encrypted in the backup. Output can be streamed to stdout for piping to tools such as OpenSSL or gzip. Restoring requires preparation with the --prepare option, and safe full or incremental restores require an empty MariaDB data directory. Backup operations connect to the running server and generally require global RELOAD, PROCESS, LOCK TABLES, and BINLOG MONITOR privileges. The listed plan is free.

WAL-G is a free, open-source archival and restoration tool for databases in cloud environments. It supports continuous backups and point-in-time recovery, with documented support for PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, and MS SQL Server; MongoDB and Redis are marked beta. Other listed database targets include Greenplum, Cloudberry, FoundationDB, and ETCD. Compression options are LZ4, LZMA, ZSTD, and Brotli, using multiple processors. PostgreSQL users can take non-exclusive base backups. Operators configure backup storage and interact with it through storage tools commands. Configuration accepts environment variables or JSON, YAML, and envfile formats. Encryption can use libsodium, OpenPGP, or Yandex Cloud KMS, but is disabled by default; envelope PGP configuration currently supports only Yandex Cloud KMS. Metrics can be sent best-effort over UDP to statsd or statsd_exporter. WAL-G runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows builds.