pgBackRest is a reliable backup and restore solution for PostgreSQL that seamlessly scales up to the largest databases and workloads.

pgBackRest v2.59.3 is the current stable release. Release notes are on the Releases page.

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October 4, 2026 - Weak Encryption Subkeys and Salts

October 4, 2026 - pgBackRest 2.59.3 Released

September 27, 2026 - pgBackRest 2.59.2 Released

Compression is usually the bottleneck during backup operations so pgBackRest solves this problem with parallel processing and more efficient compression algorithms such as lz4 and zstd.

A custom protocol allows pgBackRest to backup, restore, and archive locally or remotely via TLS/SSH with minimal configuration. An interface to query PostgreSQL is also provided via the protocol layer so that remote access to PostgreSQL is never required, which enhances security.

Multiple repositories allow, for example, a local repository with minimal retention for fast restores and a remote repository with a longer retention for redundancy and access across the enterprise.

Full, differential, and incremental backups are supported. pgBackRest is not susceptible to the time resolution issues of rsync, making differential and incremental backups safe without the requirement to checksum each file. Block-level backups save space by only copying the parts of files that have changed.

Retention policies can be set for full and differential backups to create coverage for any time frame. The WAL archive can be maintained for all backups or strictly for the most recent backups. In the latter case WAL required to make older backups consistent will be maintained in the archive.

Checksums are calculated for every file in the backup and rechecked during a restore or verify. After a backup finishes copying files, it waits until every WAL segment required to make the backup consistent reaches the repository.