At a glance
| DumpCat | SqlBak | |
|---|---|---|
| Price and license | Free and open source (Apache-2.0). No account, no license key. | Free: 1 server, 2 databases, local / NAS / FTP / Box / B2 storage. Standard $6 and Professional $9 per server per month (current prices); 10% off yearly, 30-day trial. |
| How it runs | Self-hosted: one binary with a web UI, running as a systemd or Windows service next to your database. | An agent on your server, configured and monitored from SqlBak's web dashboard (SaaS). |
| Platforms | Linux (amd64, arm64) and Windows (64-bit). | Agent for Windows and Linux. |
| Databases | MySQL 5.7, 8.0, 8.4, Percona Server, MariaDB 10.x and 11.x. | MySQL 5.6, 5.7 and 8.0, MariaDB 10.2 and later; also SQL Server. |
| Backup methods | Logical with mysqldump / mariadb-dump or parallel mydumper; hot physical backups with XtraBackup / MariaBackup, including incrementals. No locks on InnoDB. | mysqldump full backups plus binlog incrementals. No physical (XtraBackup) backups documented. |
| Point-in-time recovery | Yes. Continuous binlog archiving; restore to a timestamp, a binlog position or just before a GTID. | Yes: point-in-time restore from full and binlog backups. |
| Storage | Local disk / NFS, S3 and compatibles, Google Drive, OneDrive, SFTP, FTP / FTPS, WebDAV, Backblaze B2, Azure Blob, Dropbox and every rclone backend; several per job. | Free: local, NAS, FTP, Box, Backblaze B2. Standard adds SFTP, Dropbox, Google Drive and OneDrive. Professional adds Amazon S3, Azure and S3-compatible storage. |
| Encryption | age encryption on your server before anything is uploaded; zstd compression; SHA-256 for every file. | AES-256, on the Professional plan only. |
| Scheduling and retention | Cron-style schedules; retention per storage by count, age or GFS (daily / weekly / monthly). | Scheduled full and binlog backups set up in the dashboard; retention options are described in SqlBak's docs. |
| Restore | From the web UI: restore under a new database name, test-decrypt every file before dropping anything, integrity checks after each run. | One-click restore, including automatic restore to another server. |
| Where your data goes | Straight from your server to the storage you choose. Nothing passes through a third party. | Backups are uploaded directly from your server to your storage, bypassing sqlbak.com, and database credentials stay on your server. The agent reports to SqlBak's cloud dashboard. |
| Notifications | Email, Telegram, Slack, Discord and HMAC-signed webhooks. | Alerts from the SqlBak dashboard, including when a server stops responding. |
Choose SqlBak if
- You manage many servers and want one cloud dashboard that also warns you when a server stops responding.
- You also back up SQL Server and want one tool for both.
- You want automatic restores to another server, for example to keep a test copy up to date.
Choose DumpCat if
- Your databases are large: DumpCat adds parallel
mydumperand hot physical backups with XtraBackup / MariaBackup, including incrementals. - You run MySQL 8.4 or MariaDB 11, which DumpCat supports explicitly.
- You want no per-server fee and no account: every storage type and encryption is included for free.
- The server is on an isolated network, or you do not want a third-party dashboard involved at all.
Switching from SqlBak
- Install DumpCat on each database server.
- Add your existing storage (S3, Google Drive, SFTP…) to DumpCat, in a new folder.
- Recreate the backup jobs, and turn on binlog archiving if you used SqlBak's point-in-time backups.
- Run each job once and check the integrity result, then remove the SqlBak agent when DumpCat's retention covers what you need.
Sources
Facts about SqlBak were checked on October 18, 2026 against the sources below. Products change: if something here is out of date, please open an issue on GitHub.
SqlBak is a trademark of its owner. DumpCat is an independent open-source project and is not affiliated with it.