People look for Veeam alternatives when the free Community Edition ends at 10 workloads and the next step is a quoted, reseller-sold licence, or when they want a different shape of product altogether: an open-source tool, a backup bundled with security, or storage-first software for a small estate. They move to vendors with printed prices, to free tools they run themselves, or to larger enterprise suites.
Short answer: The closest replacements for Veeam in our backup software ranking are Acronis Cyber Protect, Commvault and Cohesity NetBackup. Choose Acronis Cyber Protect if you want backup and endpoint security from one agent and one console. All 13 alternatives below are ranked products from Best Backup Software in 2026, and each says where it differs from Veeam.
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Pricing: Free tier for up to 10 workloads (Community Edition); paid per workload, quoted through resellers
Established in: United States
Built for: An IT department running virtual infrastructure
Not for: A small business with a few laptops
01
Why buyers look past Veeam
01
The free tier stops at ten workloads
Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition is free for up to 10 workloads and covers virtual, physical and cloud systems (VMware, Hyper-V, Proxmox VE, Windows and Linux servers, laptops, NAS). Past that, Veeam points to Veeam Data Platform Essentials, which covers up to 50 workloads. A company that grows from 8 to 15 servers crosses from free to a paid licence in one step.
02
Editions are a ladder, and the price is not on the page
Veeam Data Platform comes as Foundation (backup and recovery), Advanced (adds monitoring, analytics and threat insights) and Premium (adds orchestrated recovery and the full cyber-resilience set). The vendor pages we read give no figures, and our data records that paid licences are quoted through resellers. Buyers who want to compare a price before a sales conversation look at vendors that print one.
03
Built for estates that are larger than yours
Veeam describes itself as an enterprise data platform for virtual, physical, cloud and SaaS workloads, with support for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, Microsoft 365, Entra ID and Salesforce. A team protecting a handful of servers or a few laptops does not use most of that. They often move to a narrower tool or to a free one they can run themselves.
Per app per month, often per user, published; free plan only for small Klaviyo and Mailchimp accounts
Backup for the SaaS accounts nobody backs up
the data you worry about lives in SaaS tools rather than on servers
#4
03
What each one does differently
1
Acronis Cyber Protect
Switzerland · Per workload per year, published
Acronis Cyber Protect licenses per workload type (workstation, server, virtual host or Microsoft 365 seat) in Standard, Advanced and Backup Advanced editions, and combines backup with anti-malware, endpoint management and disaster recovery in one agent. A local edition runs on premises with air-gap support. The company is based in Switzerland.
Switch from Veeam if you want backup and endpoint security from one agent and one console.
United States · Quoted per organisation; capacity or workload licensing; 30-day trial of Commvault Cloud
Commvault Cloud is the enterprise-scale rival, protecting SaaS applications, cloud, on-premises systems, identity (Active Directory, Entra ID) and DevOps tools. It is offered as SaaS or as software you install, with a free trial. Like Veeam it does not print a price, and it carries more breadth than a small estate needs.
Switch from Veeam if you need one platform for SaaS, cloud and data-centre estates and can buy through a sales process.
NetBackup, formerly sold by Veritas, is listed in our data under Cohesity and quoted per organisation. The vendor page we tried refused automated access, so we cannot describe its current editions or licensing here. It is historically aimed at very large, heterogeneous environments rather than a small team's first backup tool.
Switch from Veeam if you run a large mixed estate and already work with Cohesity or Veritas.
United States · Per workload subscription billed annually, or perpetual per CPU socket, published; one-year Free Edition for 10 workloads
NAKIVO is the nearest equivalent to Veeam's virtual-machine focus, but its prices are structured differently: subscriptions per workload (Pro Essentials is limited to 50 workloads per organisation) or perpetual licences per CPU socket for virtual environments, per server or workstation in bundles of five, and per terabyte for NAS. Microsoft 365 backup is per user, minimum 10.
Switch from Veeam if you want to choose between a subscription and a perpetual licence for a VM estate.
Austria · Free to use; support subscriptions per backup server from EUR 560 a year, published
Proxmox Backup Server is open source and built for the Proxmox VE hypervisor, with incremental, deduplicated, encrypted backups of VMs, containers and physical hosts. Support subscriptions are per server per year: Community EUR 560, Basic EUR 1,120, Standard EUR 2,240, Premium EUR 4,480, all with the same features and unlimited storage and clients.
Switch from Veeam if your virtualisation runs on Proxmox and you prefer paying for support rather than per workload.
Poland · Subscription or perpetual licence, quoted
Xopero ONE, from Poland, protects VMware and Hyper-V machines, Windows and Linux servers, endpoints, Microsoft 365 and DevOps platforms (GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab, Jira) from one console. It offers both subscription and perpetual licences, but prices are by quote. Its pitch is immutable backup storage and instant disaster recovery.
Switch from Veeam if you want to cover code repositories and SaaS together with servers and prefer a perpetual licence option.
United States · Per computer or per endpoint subscription, published; storage bought separately or through MSP360
MSP360 separates storage from software. You can bring your own storage (Amazon S3, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, Azure, Google Cloud), use local drives and NAS, or buy storage managed by MSP360. It has a free tier for personal workstations, a Pro edition from $19.99 per year, and a custom-priced platform for managed service providers.
Switch from Veeam if you are an MSP or want to pick your own cloud storage provider for each client.
United States · Per computer per year or per TB per month, published
Backblaze Computer Backup is unlimited backup for a single Mac or PC at $9 a month ($8.25 on an annual plan, $7.88 on two years), with a 15-day trial. It restores through web, mobile or a shipped drive. It is a per-computer service, with no support for hypervisors or application-aware server backup.
Switch from Veeam if you are protecting individual computers rather than servers or virtual machines.
Taiwan · Free with a Synology NAS; you pay for the box
Active Backup for Business runs on Synology DSM and needs a Synology NAS to host it. It backs up Windows PCs, Macs, physical servers, file servers and virtual machines, with global deduplication, changed block tracking and bare-metal restore. The vendor page states no licence cost, so the NAS is the real outlay.
Switch from Veeam if you already own or plan to buy a Synology NAS and want backup on it with no separate licence.
Italy · Perpetual licence per edition, published, from EUR 29 to EUR 299; free edition for basic file backup
Iperius is now sold as Iperius ONE, an IT management platform with backup, remote monitoring, remote desktop and patch management, priced per device with a 20 percent discount for annual payment and a 14-day trial. The company, Enter Srl, is Italian and states its data centres are in the EU. Backup targets are your own cloud, NAS or FTP.
Switch from Veeam if you want backup combined with remote management for a small IT shop and EU data centres.
Switzerland · Free and open source (MIT); optional management console from $2 per machine per month, published
Duplicati is MIT-licensed open source with AES-256 encryption applied before upload and dozens of storage backends (S3, Azure, Google Drive, OneDrive, SFTP, Backblaze B2 and more). A management console is free for up to 2 machines, then $2 to $2.50 per machine per month for up to 100 machines. It is not an enterprise hypervisor backup product.
Switch from Veeam if you want free, open-source, client-side-encrypted backups of files and servers to storage you choose.
restic is a free, BSD 2-Clause-licensed command-line tool shipped as a single executable for Linux, BSD, macOS and Windows. It transfers only changed data, encrypts everything and writes to many storage types, with no server to install. It has no graphical console, support contract or vendor-backed application agents.
Switch from Veeam if your team is comfortable on the command line and wants a scriptable tool with no licence.
Canada · Per app per month, often per user, published; free plan only for small Klaviyo and Mailchimp accounts
Rewind protects SaaS apps, not servers: more than 14 platforms including Jira, Shopify, GitHub, Confluence, Trello and QuickBooks Online. Pricing is per user per month, from $4.00 (Standard) and $5.20 (Advanced, with customer-held keys and longer retention). It does not back up virtual machines or file servers.
Switch from Veeam if the data you worry about lives in SaaS tools rather than on servers.
Stay with Veeam if you run VMware, Hyper-V or cloud workloads at a scale beyond a few servers and need one tool across them, plus Microsoft 365, Kubernetes and Entra ID. It is also the sensible choice if you are under the 10-workload limit of the free Community Edition and want a production-grade tool at no cost, or if your auditors and service providers already know it. The universal licence, which scales across workload types, avoids buying a separate licence for each platform you add.
05
What moving off Veeam involves
01
Keep the old backups until retention expires
Backup formats are proprietary. Restoring old Veeam restore points needs Veeam software, so keep a licensed or Community Edition install available until the last restore point you must retain has aged out.
02
Run a restore test before you cut over
Run the new tool on a subset of workloads, perform a full restore of a representative server, and compare recovery time with what you have today. Only then move the rest and retire the old jobs.
06
Questions about replacing Veeam
6 answers
Is Veeam free?
Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition is free for up to 10 workloads. Beyond that, Veeam recommends Veeam Data Platform Essentials, which supports up to 50 workloads.
What are Veeam's paid editions?
Veeam Data Platform is sold as Foundation, Advanced and Premium. Foundation covers backup and recovery, Advanced adds monitoring and analytics, and Premium adds orchestrated recovery.
Can Veeam back up Microsoft 365?
Yes. The Veeam Data Platform page lists Microsoft 365, Entra ID and Salesforce among protected workloads, together with VMware, Hyper-V, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Kubernetes.
What is a free open-source alternative?
restic (BSD 2-Clause) and Duplicati (MIT) are both free and open source. Proxmox Backup Server is open source with optional paid support from EUR 560 per server per year.
Which alternative suits a Proxmox environment?
Proxmox Backup Server is designed to work with Proxmox VE. Veeam's Community Edition page also lists Proxmox VE among supported workloads.
Does a cheaper tool replace Veeam for servers?
Computer-level services such as Backblaze Computer Backup are built for one Mac or PC per subscription, not for hypervisors. For servers, compare NAKIVO, Acronis, Proxmox Backup Server or the open-source tools.
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Sources
Checked 8 October 2026
Veeam Community Edition: 10-workload limit, supported workloads, upgrade path to Data Platform Essentials for up to 50 workloads.
Veeam Data Platform: Foundation, Advanced and Premium editions, protected workloads, universal licensing.
Acronis Cyber Protect: Editions, per-workload licensing, local edition, Swiss headquarters.
