Description

Rekkord is a free and cross-platform backup software designed to ensure security, privacy, and data resilience. Meant to be simple to deploy while remaining powerful and flexible, it allows you to back up your files locally or to a remote server, while benefiting from strong encryption and intelligent deduplication.

Rekkord is intended both for individuals who want to protect their data and for organizations wishing to build their own free and independent backup infrastructure, away from large commercial platforms.

It enables:

• Asymmetric encryption,
• Advanced data deduplication,
• Fast and efficient compression,
• And support for various storage backends, both local and remote (S3, SFTP…).

Main Features

• Client-side asymmetric encryption: the key used to encrypt data differs from the key used to decrypt it. Each machine can perform backups without being able to read them, while retaining the benefits of deduplication and compression.
• Deduplication: file segmentation using content-defined chunking ensures that only differences are stored, greatly reducing backup size.
• Fast compression (LZ4): the LZ4 algorithm ensures optimal performance with low resource usage.
• Flexible storage: back up locally, to an SFTP server, or to an S3-compatible service (such as MinIO or Wasabi), depending on your needs and constraints.
• Free and open source software: published under the GNU GPL v3 license, Rekkord can be audited, modified, and self-hosted freely.
• Cross-platform: available on Linux, macOS and Windows, it integrates easily into heterogeneous environments without proprietary dependencies.

Why Use It / Use Cases

• If you’re looking for a free, secure, and GAFAM-independent backup solution.
• For advanced users, researchers or system administrators seeking full control over data flows and end-to-end encryption.
• For organizations or associations wanting to host their own backups on controlled servers.
• For tests, labs, or technical infrastructures needing lightweight and fast incremental backups.

Rekkord aims to be a modern and transparent tool, putting trust and data control back at the heart of the backup process.

Limitations & Precautions

• The project is still young and evolving — contributions and community involvement are welcome!
• The algorithm for pruning old data is under development and testing.
• Before using it on sensitive or critical data, it is recommended to run several backup and restoration tests.
• As with any backup system, a good strategy relies on redundancy and regular verification of backup sets.

Quick Comparison with Other Open Source Options

Several similar free projects exist in the ecosystem:

• Restic — popular, simple, with symmetric encryption and multi-backend support. (Restic)
• Kopia — CLI + GUI, symmetric encryption and compression, very active. (Kopia)
• Plakar — recent French project, open source, with compression and symmetric encryption, modern and accessible approach. (Plakar)

Features	Restic	Kopia	Plakar	Rekkord
Origin	International, mature project	Very active open source project (USA)	French, recent	French, still young
License	BSD 2-Clause	Apache 2.0	MIT	GNU GPL v3
Main language	Go	Go	Go	C++
User interface	CLI only	Modern CLI + GUI	CLI + web GUI in development	CLI + web GUI in development
Encryption	Symmetric (AES-256, SHA-256)	Symmetric (AES-256-GCM)	Symmetric	Asymmetric (public/private keys)
Deduplication	Yes (fixed-size chunking)	Yes (content-defined)	Yes (content-defined)	Yes (content-defined)
Compression	No (depends on backend)	Yes (Zstandard)	Yes (Zstandard)	Yes (LZ4)
Storage	Local, SFTP, S3, Backblaze, Rclone, etc.	Local, SFTP, S3, WebDAV, GCS, Azure	Local, SFTP, S3	Local, S3, SFTP
Authentication / Security	Password, key	Password, key	Password	Public/private key, write-only support
Supported OS	Linux, macOS, Windows	Linux, macOS, Windows	Linux, macOS, Windows	Linux, macOS, Windows
Status / Maturity	Very stable, production-ready	Stable, production-ready	Actively developed	Under development, not yet stabilized
Community	Large, active	Very active	French-speaking, growing	Small but open
Particularities	Lightweight, simple	GUI, fast sync	Snapshot-based backup, French	Asymmetric encryption, open and minimalist

Rekkord positions itself as an elegant and promising alternative, combining asymmetric encryption, performance and freedom, while keeping a lightweight and evolvable architecture.

Collaboration

Since the project is open source and developed by volunteers, any contribution is welcome!

Summary