Backups Features
Validated on 19 Jun 2018 • Last edited on 9 Dec 2025
Backups are automatically-created disk images of Droplets. Enabling backups for Droplets enables system-level backups at intervals of every 4 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours, day, or week, which provides a way to revert to an older state or create new Droplets.
How Do DigitalOcean Backups Work?
We use a snapshot-based backup system that creates a point-in-time image based on the current state of a Droplet. These are called crash-consistent backups because the image retains the entirety of the disk’s data at the moment it is created.
The following process occurs on your Droplet when a backup occurs:
- We take a snapshot of the live system to create a crash-consistent, point-in-time image.
- We back up the snapshot off-disk.
- We delete the snapshot once the backup is complete.
We create these backups in the background while the Droplet is running, so you don’t need to power down.
Backup Frequency, Retention, and Schedule
Backups have the following types:
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Basic plans are divided into Weekly Backups and Daily Backups, and are billed as a percentage of the Droplet’s monthly cost.
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Usage-based plans are customizable, and are billed at a flat rate per GiB of a backup’s restorable file size. You can configure the Backup Frequency, which refers to how often backups happen (from weekly to every six hours), and Backup Retention, which refers to how long you retain them.
You can enable backups for Droplets. Backups are available for all Droplets, but they may not be ideal for Droplets with heavy I/O workloads, such as database servers, because disk write performance is degraded while the backup is being created.
We store backups in the same datacenter as the corresponding Droplet.
Backups occur during a backup window, which is a 4-hour window of time during which the Droplet automatically initiates a new backup. You can customize your backup window when you enable backups and view your current backup window on the Droplet’s Backups page.