🩺 Vitals
- 🟢 Last active: 2026-07-14
- 📦 Latest release: v1.1.4 (2026-06-30)
- 🐞 Open issues: 108
- 🌟 Stars: 2k
What do these metrics mean?
- Last active: when code was last pushed, as of our last check. The dot is green when that was recent, grey otherwise. A long gap can mean a tool is finished and stable, not only unmaintained.
- Latest release: the most recent tagged, packaged version the maintainers published. Not every healthy project tags releases.
- Open issues: unresolved reports and requests. A high number is normal for a popular project and is not a warning on its own.
- Stars: how many people bookmarked the project on its forge. A rough popularity signal, not a measure of quality.
🏗️ Profile
- Official: plakar.io
- Source: github.com/PlakarKorp/plakar
- License: ISC (Core) · Proprietary (Enterprise Control Plane)
- Deployment: Single Binary · Docker
- Data Model: Kloset immutable store (content-addressed, deduplicated, encrypted chunks)
- Jurisdiction: France 🇫🇷, EU 🇪🇺 (PLAKAR SAS)
- Compliance (SaaS): N/A (No SaaS offering)
- Compliance (Self-Hosted): GDPR Ready | HIPAA Eligible
- Complexity: Low (2/5) - Single binary and agent; the full Control Plane is more involved
- Maintenance: Low (2/5) - Simple binary updates; a young project with a fast release cadence
- Enterprise Ready: Moderate (3/5) - Immutability and encryption in the core; fleet management, IAM, KMS and compliance dashboards are Enterprise-gated
1. The Executive Summary
What is it? Plakar is an open-source backup tool built around Kloset, an immutable, content-addressed data store that splits data into deduplicated, compressed and encrypted chunks so that every snapshot is independently verifiable without a full restore. Its design goal is zero-trust data protection: backups are immutable by construction and portable through the open PTAR archive format, so they stay readable and restorable without Plakar's own tooling. The CLI, agent, Kloset engine and PTAR format are ISC-licensed and free; a commercial Enterprise tier adds the Control Plane that Restic and Kopia leave to third-party wrappers — centralized multi-repository management, IAM, KMS integration and compliance reporting. Its distinguishing angle in this lane is jurisdiction: Plakar is developed by a French company, PLAKAR SAS, placing both the code and its corporate steward inside the EU.
The Strategic Verdict:
- 🔴 For Mission-Critical Backup Today: Caution. Plakar is young — the company incorporated in late 2024, reached 1.0 in 2025, and remains effectively single-vendor with a small contributor base. Backup is the one system you cannot afford to discover is immature during a restore, so treat Plakar as an emerging option to pilot alongside a proven tool, not yet a wholesale replacement for a battle-tested one.
- 🟢 For EU Organizations Betting Early on Sovereign, Immutable Backup: Strong Consideration. For teams that value an EU-domiciled vendor, an immutability-first architecture and an open, portable format, Plakar is the most sovereignty-aligned entrant in the open backup space — and the ISC core means an early bet carries no lock-in if priorities change.
2. The "Hidden" Costs (TCO Analysis)
| Cost Component | Rubrik (Proprietary) | Plakar (Self-Hosted) |
|---|---|---|
| Licensing | Per-workload subscription, appliance or cloud | ISC core free; paid only for the Enterprise Control Plane |
| Backup Storage | Vendor-guided, often the vendor's cloud | Any storage you own, via the open Kloset store |
| Immutability | Built into the proprietary platform | Immutable by design in the open Kloset format |
| Lock-in | Proprietary catalog and appliance | Open PTAR and Kloset formats, restore without Plakar's tools |
3. The "Day 2" Reality Check
🚀 Deployment & Operations
- Installation: Plakar runs as a single Go binary with a background agent and a local UI for managing one Kloset; a container image is available. Basic backup needs only the binary and a storage target. The free UI manages a single Kloset — coordinating many repositories across machines is the job of the Enterprise Control Plane.
- Scalability: The Kloset store deduplicates and compresses across snapshots, and immutability is intrinsic to the format rather than a backend toggle you must remember to set. Horizontal management — multi-Kloset oversight, fine-grained access control, KMS-backed key management and compliance dashboards — is delivered by the Control Plane, the paid and closed part of the open-core split. As with any backup system, scheduled integrity checks and tested restores are the real operational discipline.
🛡️ Security & Governance (Risk Assessment)
- Jurisdiction & EU Sovereignty: This is Plakar's strongest card. PLAKAR SAS is a French company registered in Paris, so both the source and its corporate steward sit under EU law and GDPR, outside the reach of the US CLOUD Act. For European public bodies and regulated enterprises, an EU-domiciled backup vendor is a materially different risk profile from a US-headquartered one — and because the tool is self-hosted with no call-home, your data path stays under your control regardless of vendor domicile.
- The Compliance Shift: Plakar provides strong primitives for GDPR Ready and HIPAA Eligible backups: end-to-end encryption, a zero-trust model, and immutable-by-construction snapshots that resist tampering and ransomware. The boundary holds as with any self-hosted tool — key management, physical and network access controls, and retention-policy auditing are yours. Note specifically that the centralized compliance reporting and KMS integration that ease audits at scale live in the paid Enterprise Control Plane, not the ISC core.
- License & The Open-Core Line: The core is ISC, a permissive OSI license with no copyleft or commercial restriction, and Plakar commits to keeping the CLI, agent, Kloset and PTAR under it. The open-core caveat is specific: centralized fleet management, IAM, KMS integration and compliance dashboards are the proprietary Enterprise edition. A single machine or repository is fully served by the free core; the paywall begins when you need to govern a fleet. The deeper risk is maturity and bus factor — a young, single-vendor project whose continuity depends on one venture-backed company, mitigated only partly by the permissive license that would let the community fork.
4. Market Landscape
🏢 Proprietary Incumbents
- Rubrik: The proprietary standard for zero-trust, immutable enterprise backup, sold as a per-workload subscription tied to appliances or its cloud. Plakar pursues the same immutability-first thesis with an open core and storage you own, trading Rubrik's maturity and turnkey scale for sovereignty and freedom from lock-in.
- Veeam: The enterprise backup default, licensed per instance or socket. Organizations watching Plakar are typically drawn by an EU-domiciled, open-format alternative to a US-licensed proprietary suite, accepting a younger tool in exchange.
🤝 Open Source Ecosystem
- Restic: The mature CLI standard for encrypted, deduplicated backup. Restic is battle-tested and community-governed where Plakar is younger and corporate-backed; Plakar counters with immutability-by-design and a built-in (paid) control plane for fleet management.
- Kopia: Encrypted, deduplicated backup with a built-in GUI and multi-client server. Kopia and Plakar both go beyond a bare CLI; Kopia is fully open with no paid tier, while Plakar adds an EU-sovereign vendor and an immutability-first format behind an open-core model.