Pricing
subscription
Best For
Freelancers and creative professionals with terabytes of media files needing affordable unlimited backup
Rating
8.6/10
Last Updated
Mar 2026
TL;DR
Backblaze is the easiest backup you'll ever use. Install it, and it backs up everything on your computer—including external drives—for $9/month with no storage cap. Restores are available via web download or they'll ship you a USB drive overnight. There's no VM backup, no server support, no fancy features. That's the point. For personal and small business endpoint backup, nothing beats the simplicity-to-value ratio.
What is Backblaze?
The Anti-Enterprise Backup That Just Works
Backblaze was founded in 2007 with a radical premise: cloud backup should cost $5/month with unlimited storage and zero configuration. The price is now $9/month (inflation exists), but the philosophy hasn't changed. Install the lightweight agent, let it scan your drive, and every file gets backed up to Backblaze's cloud infrastructure. External drives, internal drives, everything. No exclusions, no storage tiers, no gotchas.
The company went public in 2021 and published its legendary hard drive reliability reports that the entire storage industry now references. Transparency is part of the brand. They publish their backup data center costs, failure rates, and even their operational challenges. That kind of openness builds trust.
Why People Love Backblaze
The agent is invisible. After installation, it runs in the background, finds new and changed files, and uploads them continuously. You don't schedule anything. You don't manage anything. CPU and bandwidth usage are minimal. When you need a file back, the web interface lets you browse your backup and download individual files or folders. For larger restores, Backblaze ships a USB drive to your door—FedEx overnight in the US. Return the drive within 30 days and they refund the shipping cost.
B2 Cloud Storage is the other side of the business. It's S3-compatible object storage at $6/TB/month—roughly one-fifth the cost of AWS S3. Many businesses use B2 as the offsite target for their Veeam or other backup infrastructure. It's reliable, cheap, and supports immutability.
What Backblaze Cannot Do
No server backup. No VM backup. No bare-metal recovery. No centralized management console for IT departments. No ransomware detection. If your computer's hard drive dies, you can restore files to a new machine, but it's a manual process of downloading or requesting a USB drive—there's no one-click system image restore.
The business product (Backblaze Business Backup) adds a groups dashboard for managing multiple computers, but it's still endpoint-only. If you need to protect servers, Backblaze B2 as a storage target paired with a separate backup tool (Veeam, MSP360, etc.) is the path.
Who Should Use Backblaze
Anyone who wants backup to be as simple as paying a utility bill. Freelancers, small businesses, remote employees, creative professionals with terabytes of media files. The unlimited storage at $9/month makes it the cheapest option for high-volume data. It's not a disaster recovery platform—it's an insurance policy for your files.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Unlimited backup storage at $9/month is the best price-to-value ratio in personal and small business backup
- Truly set-and-forget: install once, it backs up everything automatically with near-zero CPU and bandwidth impact
- USB drive restore option ships overnight so you can get terabytes of data back faster than downloading
- B2 Cloud Storage at $6/TB/month is a cheap, reliable S3-compatible target for Veeam and other backup tools
- Published hard drive reliability reports and transparent operations build genuine customer trust
Cons
- No server or VM backup capability at all—endpoints only, which limits usefulness for businesses with servers
- No bare-metal recovery or system image restore: if your drive dies, you restore files manually to a new machine
- No ransomware detection or protection—it will happily back up encrypted files without alerting you
- No centralized IT management beyond basic groups—enterprises need additional tools for policy enforcement
- File versioning keeps deleted files for only 30 days by default (extendable to 1 year for extra cost)
Backblaze Pricing
Personal Backup
- Unlimited backup storage
- All internal & external drives
- Web restore
- USB drive restore option
- Continuous backup
Business Backup
- Everything in Personal
- Admin groups dashboard
- Company-managed backups
- Centralized billing
- User management
B2 Cloud Storage
- S3-compatible API
- Object Lock immutability
- Lifecycle rules
- 10GB free
- Pay-per-use pricing
Pricing last verified: March 25, 2026
Who is Backblaze Best For?
- Freelancers and creative professionals with terabytes of media files needing affordable unlimited backup
- Small businesses wanting dead-simple endpoint backup that employees can manage without IT support
- Organizations looking for cheap S3-compatible cloud storage as an offsite backup target for Veeam or similar tools
- Remote employees who need automatic laptop backup without VPN or corporate network dependencies
Technical Details
The Bottom Line
Backblaze scores 8.6/10. It stands out for unlimited backup storage at $9/month is the best price-to-value ratio in personal and small business backup. Best suited for freelancers and creative professionals with terabytes of media files needing affordable unlimited backup. Keep in mind that no server or vm backup capability at all—endpoints only, which limits usefulness for businesses with servers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Based on editorial analysis