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AWS Backup vs SimpleBackups

SEPT 2026 audit

A comparison of AWS Backup and SimpleBackups built from values read directly from each provider's own documentation, with the source recorded against every figure.

Reviewed by Palash BagchiUpdated 15 criteria comparedSources last checked

The short answer

Choose AWS Backup if…

Backing up AWS services from one console with nothing bought in advance. There is no minimum fee and no setup charge, and the rate is per GB-month per service, so a small estate genuinely pays a small bill.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Choose SimpleBackups if…

Backing up many different things on a schedule you choose and being told when one stops working: 5 jobs at $49 a month rising to 100 at $299, with unlimited storage of your own alongside whatever the plan includes.

Editorial · Palash Bagchi · approved

Consider something else if…

  • AWS Backup: Your estate is not all AWS, or disaster recovery means a copy in another region. Cross-region transfer is billed as its own line where rsync.net and BorgBase charge nothing to move data at all, and anything moved to cold storage is committed for 90 days whether you keep it or not.
  • SimpleBackups: You protect one or two things. The free plan allows a single job with 1 GB, and the next step is $49 — Snapshooter covers three resources for $14 and five times that for $39.

Neither quite fits? Every other option, ranked by iScore: AWS Backup alternatives · SimpleBackups alternatives

5 sourced criteria separate them — see where, with sources, below.

Visit AWS Backup documentationVisit SimpleBackups documentation

No affiliate links, sponsored placements or paid rankings appear on this site. Ordering follows the sourced data and the stated criteria.

01.

At a glance.

CriterionAWS BackupSimpleBackups
Pricing
Free tierYesYes
What the free plan includesBackup storage free tiers exist for EBS, DocumentDB and Neptune. The pricing page names them only in passing, to say they do not apply inside a logically air-gapped vault, and never states how large they are — so the allowance is confirmed to exist here and its size is not sourced from here.The Basic plan at $0: one backup job and 1 GB of included storage, with your own storage connectable without limit.
Entry paid planNone. There is no minimum fee and no setup charge, so the smallest possible bill is the cost of whatever is actually stored — the only member of this category without a floor to clear.$49 a month for Lite, which includes 5 backup jobs, 50 GB of storage and a floor of 12 hours between runs.
Pricing modelPure consumption, with no plan and no floor: backup storage held, cross-region transfer, data restored, and backup evaluations. Nothing is bought in advance, which is the opposite end of the category from the job-count and resource-count plans.Per backup job, in plan-sized blocks of 1, 5, 20 and 100, with storage included at each step and unlimited bring-your-own storage alongside it. The tier also sets how often a job may run — 12 hours, 1 hour, then 5 minutes — so the plan buys recovery point objective as much as it buys capacity.
Compliance
Encryption at restYes, and independently of the source: a backup can carry a different encryption method from the resource it was taken from, so an unencrypted volume can still produce an encrypted recovery point. Only resource types supporting full AWS Backup management get this; others inherit the source resource encryption.Your data is encrypted at rest and in transit using AES-256, SSL and with your own private key.
Customer-managed keysYes, through KMS. The key is configured on the backup vault rather than per backup, so the vault is the unit of key control — which also means moving a backup between vaults changes which key protects it.Adding your own encryption key to backups means that no backups are readable by anyone, even us at transit, since the encrypted output is sent to your storage.

Only criteria both providers publish appear here; a tinted cell marks a real difference. Criteria only one of them documents are listed below, and an absence there means we found no source — not that the feature is missing. How we source this.

The small bar above a value is inetGeek's own lean toward that side — computed from the same facts shown, never a number the provider published. See the picker below "The short answer" to weigh only the criteria you care about.

02.

Where they differ.

What the free plan includes

AWS Backup
Backup storage free tiers exist for EBS, DocumentDB and Neptune. The pricing page names them only in passing, to say they do not apply inside a logically air-gapped vault, and never states how large they are — so the allowance is confirmed to exist here and its size is not sourced from here.
SimpleBackups
The Basic plan at $0: one backup job and 1 GB of included storage, with your own storage connectable without limit.
Sources (2) →

Entry paid plan

AWS Backup
None. There is no minimum fee and no setup charge, so the smallest possible bill is the cost of whatever is actually stored — the only member of this category without a floor to clear.
SimpleBackups
$49 a month for Lite, which includes 5 backup jobs, 50 GB of storage and a floor of 12 hours between runs.
Sources (2) →

Pricing model

AWS Backup
Pure consumption, with no plan and no floor: backup storage held, cross-region transfer, data restored, and backup evaluations. Nothing is bought in advance, which is the opposite end of the category from the job-count and resource-count plans.
SimpleBackups
Per backup job, in plan-sized blocks of 1, 5, 20 and 100, with storage included at each step and unlimited bring-your-own storage alongside it. The tier also sets how often a job may run — 12 hours, 1 hour, then 5 minutes — so the plan buys recovery point objective as much as it buys capacity.
Sources (2) →

Encryption at rest

AWS Backup
Yes, and independently of the source: a backup can carry a different encryption method from the resource it was taken from, so an unencrypted volume can still produce an encrypted recovery point. Only resource types supporting full AWS Backup management get this; others inherit the source resource encryption.
SimpleBackups
Your data is encrypted at rest and in transit using AES-256, SSL and with your own private key.
Sources (2) →

Customer-managed keys

AWS Backup
Yes, through KMS. The key is configured on the backup vault rather than per backup, so the vault is the unit of key control — which also means moving a backup between vaults changes which key protects it.
SimpleBackups
Adding your own encryption key to backups means that no backups are readable by anyone, even us at transit, since the encrypted output is sent to your storage.
Sources (2) →

When these numbers change, hear about it. Sources are re-checked monthly; a repricing goes out as a short note.

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03.

Documented by only one.

These criteria are published by one provider and not the other. An absence here means we have not found a source, not that the feature is missing — except where we say we read the other provider's own page on a given date and it does not state it. Those rows lean, and the provider can correct them with a link.

Credit card to startSimpleBackups: No
Egress over allowanceAWS Backup: Charged. Backup data transferred between AWS Regions is billed as its own line, so cross-region copies — the thing that makes a backup a disaster recovery plan — are not free the way they are at rsync.net and BorgBase.
Backup retentionSimpleBackups: Customer-defined on every paid tier, described only as flexible retention and schedule rather than as a fixed number of days.
Storage priceAWS Backup: $0.05 per GB-month warm and $0.01 per GB-month cold, for EFS in us-east-1. The rate is per protected service rather than universal — EBS, RDS, Aurora and DynamoDB each carry their own — so this is one row of a table, not a headline price.
Minimum storage durationAWS Backup: 90 days for anything moved to cold storage. Deleting earlier still bills the remaining days, so cold storage is a commitment rather than a cheaper shelf.
SOC 2SimpleBackups: Listed as a feature of the $299 Max plan rather than as a property of the company, which is an unusual way to present an attestation and is recorded as the page frames it.AWS Backup: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about AWS Backup.
ISO 27001SimpleBackups: ISO 27001 certified and GDPR compliant, with the backup evidence a SOC 2 or HIPAA program has to produce.AWS Backup: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about AWS Backup.
HIPAAAWS Backup: Yes. AWS Backup is named on the HIPAA Eligible Services Reference, the list of services that may handle protected health information under the AWS Business Associate Addendum. Eligibility is per-service rather than account-wide, so the list is the thing to check.SimpleBackups: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about SimpleBackups.
GDPR / data residencySimpleBackups: ISO 27001 certified and GDPR compliant, with the backup evidence a SOC 2 or HIPAA program has to produce.AWS Backup: not stated on its own page when read on 2026-09-21 — corrections welcome · every such claim about AWS Backup.
04.

Questions this comparison answers.

Entry paid plan: AWS Backup or SimpleBackups?

AWS Backup: None. There is no minimum fee and no setup charge, so the smallest possible bill is the cost of whatever is actually stored — the only member of this category without a floor to clear.

SimpleBackups: $49 a month for Lite, which includes 5 backup jobs, 50 GB of storage and a floor of 12 hours between runs.

Should I choose AWS Backup or SimpleBackups?

Pick AWS Backup if Backing up AWS services from one console with nothing bought in advance. There is no minimum fee and no setup charge, and the rate is per GB-month per service, so a small estate genuinely pays a small bill.

Pick SimpleBackups if Backing up many different things on a schedule you choose and being told when one stops working: 5 jobs at $49 a month rising to 100 at $299, with unlimited storage of your own alongside whatever the plan includes.

Provider pages

AWS BackupA central control plane for backing up AWS services, billed per GB-month of backup storage with no plan.SimpleBackupsManaged backup automation for servers, databases and storage, billed by the number of backup jobs.

Related comparisons

AWS Backup vs BorgBaseAWS Backup vs rsync.netrsync.net vs SimpleBackupsSimpleBackups vs SnapShooterrsync.net vs BorgBase

Comments

Every page here is sourced and dated.