Can I back up Notion to Google Drive for free?

Yes. The open-source @restora/cli runs on your machine and uploads a full, structured backup to your own Google Drive at no cost. Nothing is stored on Restora's servers — the backup goes straight from your computer to your Drive.

Is a Notion backup in Google Drive better than an export?

Yes, if it's structured. A Notion CSV or Markdown export dropped in Drive is still lossy — relations, rollups, formulas, and views don't survive it. Restora writes a structured backup that keeps databases as definitions, so it can be rebuilt back inside Notion, relations and views included.

Where in Google Drive do the backups go?

Into a Restora Backups folder in your own Google Drive, timestamped per run. You authorize access to your Drive during setup; Restora never holds a copy. Retention keeps your most recent backups and trims older ones so the folder doesn't grow forever.

Do I have to keep my computer on for scheduled backups?

For the free CLI schedule, yes — it runs as a local job, so the machine needs to be awake at run time. If you'd rather it run hands-off in the cloud to your Drive, the Pro web app handles the cadence for $6.99/month and adds near-real-time deletion alerts.

How to Back Up Notion to Google Drive (Free & Automatic)

Google Drive is a good home for a Notion backup for the boring, correct reasons: you already have it, it's off Notion's infrastructure, and Google keeps its own versions on top of yours. The trick is getting a copy in there that's actually worth restoring — not a lossy export zip, and not something you have to remember to do.

Here's the free, automatic way, and where the paid, hands-off option fits.

What you want landing in Drive (and what you don't)

Dragging a Notion CSV export into Drive feels like a backup, but it isn't much of one. That export already dropped your relations, rollups, formulas, and views on the way out — see what Notion's export leaves behind — so all Drive is holding is flat text you can't rebuild from.

What you actually want in Drive is a structured backup: databases saved as definitions (relations, rollups, and formulas as logic, not frozen numbers), views, page hierarchy, and row attachments up to 20MB (150MB on Restora Pro) each. That's a copy you can put back inside Notion, not just read. Restora's backup is a single structured file per run, and it goes straight from your machine to your Drive — nothing is stored on Restora's servers.

Step 1 — Install and connect (free CLI)

The open-source @restora/cli does the whole thing locally. One command sets it up and walks you through connecting Notion and authorizing your own Google Drive:

npx @restora/cli setup

You'll pick which pages and databases Notion shares with the tool, and sign in to the Google account whose Drive should hold the backups. The Google authorization is between you and Google — the backup uploads with your permission, and Restora keeps no copy.

Step 2 — Run your first backup

Pull a full copy into Drive:

restora backup

It reads your workspace read-only and writes one structured, timestamped file into a Restora Backups folder in your Drive. Big workspace? It streams to disk and up to Drive, so size isn't a wall. When you're done, you have a real, restorable copy sitting in storage you own.

Step 3 — Put it on a schedule

A backup you run by hand is one you'll stop running. Schedule it so it happens on its own:

restora schedule --daily 09:00

That registers a local job that backs up to your Drive every morning. The only catch with the free CLI schedule is that it's a job on your machine — the computer has to be awake at run time.

Want it fully hands-off? The Pro option

If you don't want to keep a machine awake on a schedule, the Restora Pro web app runs the backups for you, in the cloud, to your own Google Drive — same structured copy, same store-nothing boundary, no local job to babysit. Pro also adds near-real-time deletion alerts, so if a database gets wiped you hear about it in minutes. It's $6.99/month; the CLI stays free forever. Both write to your Drive and keep nothing on Restora's side.

On retention. Each scheduled run adds a file, so Restora keeps your most recent backups and trims older ones to the count you set — your Drive folder holds a rolling history instead of growing without end. You choose how many to keep.

The honest limits

Two things worth knowing before you rely on this. First, a restore creates new pages — rebuilt databases get new Notion IDs, so edit history and comments reset to the moment of the restore; your content and structure come back, the metadata trail starts fresh. Second, a backup only holds what it captured, so anything created after the last run isn't in that copy. That's exactly why the schedule matters: the gap between runs is the only window you can't recover. When you do need to put a database back, the full sequence is in restoring a database with relations intact.