The SimpleBackups API: Automate Your Backups Programmatically

Most teams set up their backups once and forget about them. That works — until you need a backup triggered before every deployment, or you want to spin up backup jobs automatically when a new client onboards, or your CI pipeline needs to verify that last night's backup actually succeeded.

That's exactly why we built the SimpleBackups API.

What the API lets you do

The API gives you full programmatic control over your backup infrastructure. You can:

• Trigger backups on demand — fire off a backup before a deploy, after a migration, or on any event you define
• Create and manage backup jobs — set up new backups, update schedules, pause or resume jobs, all without touching the dashboard
• Monitor backup status — pull activity logs, check job results, and get upcoming schedule info
• Manage servers and storage — add servers, validate connections, and list your connected storage providers
• Switch between teams — if you manage multiple teams, the API handles that too

The base URL is https://my.simplebackups.io/api, authentication is a simple Bearer token, and you get 60 requests per minute — more than enough for any reasonable automation.

The AI angle: backups meet Claude and Codex

Here's something that's been surprisingly useful: connecting the SimpleBackups API to AI coding assistants like Claude or Codex.

Think about it. When you're working with an AI assistant that can execute code, it can also call APIs. That means you can ask Claude to:

• "Trigger a backup of the production database before we start this migration"
• "Check if last night's backups all completed successfully"
• "Create a new backup job for this server with daily snapshots to S3"

The AI agent handles the API call, parses the response, and tells you the result in plain English. No need to remember endpoint URLs or dig through documentation.

This works particularly well in deployment workflows. You're already using AI to help write and review code — having it also ensure your data is backed up before pushing changes is a natural extension.

A practical example

Say you're using Claude Code in a pre-deploy workflow. You can set up a pattern where the AI:

1. Calls POST /api/backups/{id}/trigger to run a backup
2. Polls the backup status until it completes
3. Only proceeds with the deployment once the backup is confirmed

No custom scripts to maintain. The AI handles the orchestration.

Key API endpoints

You don't need to memorize the full API. Here are the endpoints that matter most for day-to-day automation:

Trigger a backup

POST /api/backups/{id}/trigger

This is the one you'll use most. Fires off an immediate backup for any existing job. Perfect for pre-deploy hooks, cron-triggered workflows, or anything that needs a fresh backup before proceeding.

Create a backup job

POST /api/backups

Creates a new backup job from scratch — specify the server, storage destination, schedule, and what to back up. Useful when onboarding new clients or spinning up new environments where you want backups configured automatically.

List backups and check status

GET /api/backups

Returns all your backup jobs with their current status. Combine this with the activity endpoints to build monitoring dashboards or Slack notifications for failed backups.

Get activity and reports

GET /api/activity/report?from={date}&to={date}

Pull comprehensive activity reports for any time period. Great for generating weekly backup health summaries or feeding data into your existing monitoring stack.

Using the API in team workflows

The API shines when backups become part of your team's operational workflow instead of a separate concern:

• Pre-deploy safety net — Add a backup trigger to your CI/CD pipeline. Every deploy gets a fresh backup, automatically.
• Client onboarding automation — When a new client signs up in your system, create their backup jobs via API without manual setup.
• Monitoring and alerting — Poll backup status and pipe results into Slack, PagerDuty, or whatever your team uses for alerts.
• Scheduled reporting — Generate weekly backup health reports for stakeholders who want proof that data is protected.
• Multi-team management — If you're an agency managing backups for multiple clients, use the teams API to switch context programmatically.

The idea is simple: backups should be infrastructure, not a manual task. The API makes that possible.

Getting started

Head to your SimpleBackups dashboard and grab your API token from the settings. The API documentation covers every endpoint with request and response examples.

If you're using AI assistants, point them at the docs and let them handle the integration. It's genuinely one of the fastest ways to get backup automation running.