# wal-e/wal-e

Continuous Archiving for Postgres

Repository: https://github.com/wal-e/wal-e
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/wal-e
Language: Python
License: BSD-3-Clause
License Family: permissive
Topics: python, backup, backups, postgresql, postgres, archiving, s3, google-cloud-storage, openstack-swift, blob-store, azure-blob, replication, recovery, pitr
Last push: 2023-12-20T06:01:14+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4975, "days_push": 987, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3464, forks 312 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:05.738601+00:00)

## What it is
WAL-E is a command-line tool for continuous archiving of PostgreSQL WAL files and base backups to cloud blob storage such as S3, Azure, Google Cloud Storage, and Swift. It integrates with Postgres's archive_command and restore_command for point-in-time recovery, but is now officially obsolete in favor of WAL-G and pgBackRest.

## Use cases
- archive postgres wal files to s3
- take base backups of postgresql to cloud storage
- set up point-in-time recovery for postgres
- restore a postgres database from cloud backup
- prune old postgres backups to retain a finite number

## When to choose
- you maintain a legacy deployment already built around WAL-E archives
- you need to read or manage existing WAL-E-format archives

## When to avoid
- starting a new Postgres backup setup - use WAL-G or pgBackRest instead
- you need actively maintained software or fast archiving performance

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: abandoned
- function: backup, database
- domain: databases, cloud-computing, self-hosted
- platform: python, cli
- tags: postgresql, pitr, wal-archiving, s3, cloud-storage, disaster-recovery, linux

## Member repositories
- wal-e/wal-e (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:05.738601+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:36:53.254145+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/wal-e/wal-e (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:05.738601+00:00, sha 69fb6ea43f16)
  - registry_pypi: https://pypi.org/pypi/wal-e/json (fetched 2026-08-29T09:30:50.641268+00:00, sha 6762e88eb27b)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.