IMO compression in backups is overrated. (I run Relica, a backup service built atop restic: https://relicabackup.com)

Most large files are already in compressed formats: mp4, zip, tgz, jpg, etc.

What you _really_ want is deduplication (which restic does), so that chunks are only stored once, even if multiple machines sharing some data back up to the same repo. Dedup saves me about 30% per backup repo in my own experience.

Not saying compression wouldn't be nice (to have done properly, it is somewhat at odds with encryption), but I'm just saying I don't think it's worth making it a #1 deciding factor.

I agree that compression is overrated for most backups. It'd help with a lot of text-oriented data, but honestly that takes up so little space compared to a vm image or something like that.

If I was backing up a single computer, compression would matter more to me. But if I'm backing up 10s or 100s of servers, there's going to be a lot of duplicated data that would make a much bigger difference.

You can always back up onto a compression enabled file system to further save space + dedupe with rustic.

Borg is a fantastic tool but the time it takes to start and parse the files req on a large system negates the benefits of compression for me unfortunately.

Encryption totally defeats any raw compression. It would need to be inside the blobs themselves.