Answer
Does Bluehost charge to restore a backup?
Yes. Bluehost takes backups at no cost but charges a one-time fee to restore one. Its own support documentation confirms the fee exists without publishing the amount — which is worth knowing before you need it rather than during an outage.
What Bluehost's backups actually are
Three details from Bluehost's own documentation matter more than the fee:
- Backups run once a week, on a random day.
- Each run overwrites the previous backup, so there is normally one restore point, not a history.
- Bluehost describes them as a courtesy and states it is “not liable for any files or data stored on your account”.
Put together: if your site breaks on a Thursday and the backup ran on Friday, you may be restoring to a point six days old, and paying for the privilege. Accounts under 20 GB and 100,000 files are described as getting daily, weekly and monthly cycles, but the weekly overwrite behaviour is what applies to most shared plans.
What to do instead
Run your own backups to storage you control. A free WordPress backup plugin writing to your own cloud storage costs nothing, keeps a real history, and does not charge you to restore. Treat any host’s built-in backup as a convenience, not as your actual disaster plan — that is true everywhere, but Bluehost’s liability disclaimer makes it explicit.
How the other two compare
- SiteGround — daily backups with 30 days of history, free on every plan, and no restore fee. The best of the three by a wide margin.
- Hostinger — weekly free on all plans; daily backups are a paid add-on on Premium and included from Unlimited upward.
Bluehost documents that a restore fee applies but does not publish the amount anywhere we could find. If backups matter to you, ask support for the current figure in writing before you sign up. We will publish it here if we can confirm it.
Related
More questions
- Does Bluehost refund the free domain?
- Is Bluehost's free migration actually free?
- Is 10 GB of hosting storage enough for a WordPress site?
- How do I avoid the hosting renewal price increase?
- How do I cancel Bluehost and get a refund?
- Can I transfer my domain away from Bluehost?
All hosting questions, answered →
Sources
Every factual claim on this page is checkable on the provider’s own site. Prices and policies were verified September 2026 and change without notice.