# AWS Backup vs SnapShooter

Canonical: https://inetgeek.com/compare/aws-backup-vs-snapshooter/

Every value below is read from AWS Backup's and SnapShooter's own documentation. See https://inetgeek.com/methodology/ for how.

## At a glance

| Criterion | AWS Backup | SnapShooter |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| What the free plan includes | 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. | One backup job, daily, with daily retention and 500 MB of included storage. The card is titled Free and its call to action is Register rather than the Try for free used on paid cards — but it also prints $14 a month, which is the Lite price, and the page shows Lite at both $14 and $13 elsewhere. Recorded as printed; the $14 on a plan called Free is not resolved here. |
| Entry paid plan | 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. | $14 a month for Lite, covering up to 3 backup resources with 10 GB of included storage and daily runs. |
| Pricing model | 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. | Per backup resource — 3, 20, 50, then 250 — with included storage at each step and unlimited bring-your-own storage throughout. As with SimpleBackups the tier also buys frequency, from daily to twice daily to every 5 minutes, so the plan is really priced on how much you protect and how recently. |
| Encryption at rest | 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. | Listed as a feature of the $79 Business plan and above, so the two cheapest paid tiers do not name it. |

## 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. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/backup/pricing/))
- SnapShooter: One backup job, daily, with daily retention and 500 MB of included storage. The card is titled Free and its call to action is Register rather than the Try for free used on paid cards — but it also prints $14 a month, which is the Lite price, and the page shows Lite at both $14 and $13 elsewhere. Recorded as printed; the $14 on a plan called Free is not resolved here. ([source](https://snapshooter.com/pricing))

### 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. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/backup/pricing/))
- SnapShooter: $14 a month for Lite, covering up to 3 backup resources with 10 GB of included storage and daily runs. ([source](https://snapshooter.com/pricing))

### 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. ([source](https://aws.amazon.com/backup/pricing/))
- SnapShooter: Per backup resource — 3, 20, 50, then 250 — with included storage at each step and unlimited bring-your-own storage throughout. As with SimpleBackups the tier also buys frequency, from daily to twice daily to every 5 minutes, so the plan is really priced on how much you protect and how recently. ([source](https://snapshooter.com/pricing))

### 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. ([source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/aws-backup/latest/devguide/encryption.html))
- SnapShooter: Listed as a feature of the $79 Business plan and above, so the two cheapest paid tiers do not name it. ([source](https://snapshooter.com/pricing))

## Which should you choose?

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 SnapShooter if Protecting a handful of servers or DigitalOcean resources without paying for a platform: $14 a month covers three, with daily runs, 10 GB included and unlimited bring-your-own storage on every tier including the free one.

Consider something else: 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.

Consider something else: SnapShooter — You need backups encrypted or rotated. Backup encryption is listed from the $79 Business plan and weekly and monthly retention from $39, so the entry tier keeps daily copies in whatever state they arrived.

## Documented by only one

- Egress over allowance: AWS 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 retention: SnapShooter: Daily only on the entry plan; daily, weekly and monthly rotation from the $39 Startup plan upward. Retention rotation is a paid feature rather than a default.
- Storage price: AWS 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 duration: AWS 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.
- HIPAA: AWS 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.
- 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.

## Questions this comparison answers

**Entry paid plan: AWS Backup or SnapShooter?**

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.
SnapShooter: $14 a month for Lite, covering up to 3 backup resources with 10 GB of included storage and daily runs.

**Should I choose AWS Backup or SnapShooter?**

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 SnapShooter if Protecting a handful of servers or DigitalOcean resources without paying for a platform: $14 a month covers three, with daily runs, 10 GB included and unlimited bring-your-own storage on every tier including the free one.