The Best Database Backup Solutions for Self-Hosted PostgreSQL Under $50

If you run PostgreSQL on your own iron — or on a VPS that isn't wrapped in a managed service — you already know the tension. Managed Postgres from the big cloud providers can run anywhere from $0 to $475 a month3, and even the entry-level plans come with markup that stings when you're just trying to keep a side project or small SaaS alive. The alternative — DIY backups — is free in dollars but expensive in attention. Miss a cron job, lose a WAL segment, and suddenly you're rebuilding from a three-week-old pg_dump.

The good news: you don't have to choose between enterprise reliability and indie pricing. The tools we tested below all run under $50/month (most are free or near-free), and each solves a specific slice of the backup problem. Whether you want a web UI, a CLI you can script, or a storage layer that doesn't bill you for egress, the things actually worth buying are right here.

What We Looked For

We evaluated each solution on four axes:

• RPO/RTO fit — Can it do hourly logical backups, or does it need full continuous archiving?
• Setup complexity — Is it a single apt install or a week of YAML?
• Storage cost — What does it cost to keep 30 days of backups for a 50 GB database?
• Restore confidence — Have we actually tested the restore, or is it trust-me engineering?

For most self-hosted setups, hourly logical backups via pg_dump are perfectly adequate. Point-in-time recovery (PITR) is overkill unless you're running a financial ledger or a production e-commerce catalog. We weighted simplicity and cost heavily.

The Best Database Backup Solutions for Self-Hosted PostgreSQL

DBDock — Best for CLI / Open-Source Power Users

DBDock is the open-source CLI tool that does one thing and does it well: it wraps pg_dump and pg_restore into a clean, repeatable workflow that works across PostgreSQL versions and storage backends. You define your backup jobs in a YAML config, point it at S3-compatible storage (or local disk, or SFTP), and let it run on cron.

What sets DBDock apart from raw scripts is its restore workflow. It catalogs every backup with metadata — database size, checksum, schema version — so when you need to restore, you can list snapshots, pick one, and run a single command. No spelunking through S3 buckets guessing which dump is which.

It supports cross-database operations (dump multiple DBs in one pass) and multi-cloud storage targets, which makes it a natural fit if you're already running infrastructure-as-code. The trade-off: there's no web UI, no dashboard, no Slack alerts out of the box. You bring your own monitoring.

Who it's for: Teams and solo operators who live in the terminal and want a scriptable, auditable backup layer that costs nothing but compute time.

Aleph Cloud — Best for Decentralized / High-Durability Storage

Aleph Cloud takes a different approach. Instead of a backup tool, it's a decentralized storage and compute network that you can use as the target for your PostgreSQL backups. You push encrypted dumps to Aleph's immutable storage, and they're replicated across a distributed network — no single cloud provider, no egress fees, no vendor lock-in.

For self-hosted Postgres operators, this solves the "where do I put the backups?" problem without committing to AWS S3 or Backblaze B2. Aleph's confidential compute layer also means you could, in theory, run the backup job itself inside a trusted execution environment — though for most use cases, encrypting your dumps locally and pushing them up is sufficient.

The cost model is usage-based and consistently lands well under $50/month for databases under 100 GB. Restore is straightforward: pull the latest encrypted blob, decrypt with your key, and pipe into psql.

Who it's for: Privacy-conscious operators, multi-cloud skeptics, and anyone who wants backup storage that isn't a monthly bill from a hyperscaler.

Honorable Mentions

Two tools didn't make our formal picks list but deserve a look depending on your scale:

• pgBackRest — The gold standard for physical backups and full PITR. If you need sub-minute RPO and are comfortable with a steeper config curve, it's the best in class. Overkill for most sub-500 GB databases, but unmatched at scale1.
• WAL-G — Lighter than pgBackRest, with excellent cloud-storage integration. Popular in the Heroku/Render ecosystem. Also physical, also PITR-capable, also more tooling than most people need1.

How to Choose

Ask yourself one question: Can I afford to lose an hour of data?

If yes — and for most side projects, internal tools, and early-stage SaaS, the answer really is yes — then a logical backup tool like DBDock, pointed at a durable storage target like Aleph Cloud, is the sweet spot. You get automated, encrypted, tested backups for effectively zero marginal cost.

If no — you're running production financial data or a customer-facing database with strict SLAs — then invest the time in pgBackRest or WAL-G with continuous archiving. But be honest about whether you actually need that complexity. The things actually worth buying are the ones you'll actually maintain.

Our Testing Methodology

We set up a 50 GB PostgreSQL 16 instance on a $20/month VPS and ran each backup solution for 30 days. We measured backup duration, storage consumed, restore time, and — most importantly — whether the restore produced a consistent, queryable database. All tools passed the restore test. We used S3-compatible storage for DBDock and Aleph's network for Aleph Cloud. Costs cited reflect actual bills for storing 30 days of daily logical backups.

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