Best Cloud Backup Services 2026: Backblaze vs Arq vs restic

Short answer: Backblaze Personal at around $9/month for unlimited data is the right choice for most people with one computer. If you need multiple machines or want end-to-end encryption you control, Arq paired with cheap object storage costs less and gives you more control.

Cloud backup and cloud storage are different products, and confusing them is how people lose data. Google Drive and Dropbox sync — if you delete a file or ransomware encrypts it, that change propagates. A backup service keeps versioned history you can roll back to.

The Options

Service	Rough cost	Capacity	Best for
Backblaze Personal	~$9/mo per computer	Unlimited	One machine, set and forget
Arq + B2 / S3	$50 once + ~$6/TB/mo	Pay per TB	Multiple machines, control
restic + object storage	Free + ~$6/TB/mo	Pay per TB	Servers, scripted backups
iDrive	~$100/yr	Several TB	Many devices on one plan

Sync Is Not Backup

Worth being blunt about, because it is the mistake that actually costs people their work.

Deletion propagates. Delete a folder locally and it disappears from the cloud too. Most sync services keep 30 days of history; after that it is gone.
Ransomware propagates. Encrypted files sync as “changed” files. Your cloud copy becomes encrypted too.
Corruption propagates. A file that silently corrupts locally uploads over the good copy.

Backup software keeps immutable, versioned snapshots. You can restore the state of a directory from three weeks ago. That is the property that saves you.

1. Backblaze Personal — Best for Most People

Around $9/month for unlimited data from one computer, including attached external drives. Install it and forget it.

Strengths: genuinely unlimited, so a 4TB photo library costs the same as 100GB. Continuous background backup. Restore by download, or pay to have a physical drive posted to you — useful when you need 3TB back and your connection would take a fortnight.

Limitations: priced per computer, so three machines cost three subscriptions. It backs up user data, not a full bootable system image. Network drives are excluded.

Turn on the private encryption key during setup. Without it Backblaze holds the keys. With it, only you can decrypt — and if you lose that passphrase the data is unrecoverable, which is the correct trade.

2. Arq + Object Storage — Best Control

Arq is a one-off purchase of around $50 that backs up to storage you choose: Backblaze B2, Amazon S3, Wasabi, or your own server.

Storage runs roughly $6 per TB per month on B2, so 500GB costs about $3/month. For several machines with modest data this is cheaper than per-computer subscriptions, and you are never locked to one provider.

Everything is encrypted client-side before upload. The provider stores ciphertext it cannot read.

The trade-off is that you are now the administrator. You choose the retention policy, you verify restores work, and you notice if backups stop. Backblaze does that thinking for you.

3. restic — Best for Servers

Free, open source, scriptable, and the sensible default for backing up a VPS or a home server.

# initialise a repository on B2
restic -r b2:my-bucket:/backups init

# back up, keeping the last 7 daily and 4 weekly snapshots
restic -r b2:my-bucket:/backups backup /var/www /etc
restic -r b2:my-bucket:/backups forget --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 4 --prune

Deduplicated, encrypted, and incremental, so daily snapshots of a mostly-unchanged directory cost almost nothing. Put it in cron and send the output somewhere you will read it.

The Rule Worth Following

Three copies. Two kinds of media. One off-site.

In practice, for a developer:

The working copy on your laptop
A local external SSD, for fast restores of recent work
A cloud backup, for the fire-and-theft case

Git does not count as a backup. It covers committed source code and nothing else — not your environment files, not local databases, not the uncommitted branch you have been working on for three days.

The Step Everyone Skips

An untested backup is a hypothesis, not a backup. The common failure is discovering, at the worst moment, that the job silently stopped six weeks ago or that the restore does not work.

Once a quarter, restore something. Pick a real file from a month ago and pull it back. It takes five minutes and converts an assumption into a fact.

Also check your backup actually covers what you think. Common omissions: external drives, databases running locally, virtual machine images, and anything under a path the default configuration excludes.

What About Cost at Scale?

Watch egress charges. Storing data is cheap; getting it back can be expensive. Backblaze B2 and Wasabi have friendly egress terms. Amazon S3 charges meaningfully to download, and a full restore of several terabytes can produce a surprising bill.

Check the restore cost before you need a restore, not after.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Google Drive or Dropbox a backup?

No. They sync, so deletions, corruption and ransomware propagate to the cloud copy. Most keep about 30 days of file history, which helps for an accidental deletion you notice quickly and not for anything else. Use a real backup service alongside them.

What is the best cloud backup service in 2026?

Backblaze Personal for most people — unlimited data, roughly $9 a month, no configuration. For several machines or if you want to hold the encryption keys, Arq with Backblaze B2 costs less and gives more control.

How much does cloud backup cost?

Around $9/month per computer for unlimited on Backblaze. Roughly $6 per TB per month if you use object storage with your own client, so 500GB is about $3/month. Check egress pricing before choosing.

Is my data encrypted?

In transit and at rest with any reputable service. What differs is who holds the key. Enable a private key on Backblaze, or use Arq or restic which encrypt client-side by default. If the provider can read your files, so can anyone who compromises the provider.

How often should backups run?

Continuously or daily for a working machine. The question to ask is how much work you are willing to redo — that is your backup interval. For most people a day is tolerable; for some an hour is not.

Do I still need a local backup?

Yes. Restoring 500GB from the cloud takes hours or days; from a local SSD it takes minutes. Local for speed, cloud for the disasters that destroy both your laptop and the drive next to it.

The Bottom Line

Install Backblaze on your main machine, enable the private encryption key, and add a local external SSD for fast restores. If you run servers, put restic on a cron job pointed at B2. Then restore one real file next quarter to prove any of it works.