A PrivateBin alternative, compared honestly
PrivateBin is well-designed open source software, and if you want to self-host an always-encrypted pastebin you should use it. Pastepile is the hosted option for people who also want an API, raw endpoints, public pastes when they choose, and encryption when they choose.
Feature by feature
| Feature | Pastepile | PrivateBin |
|---|---|---|
| Client-side (end-to-end) encryption PrivateBin encrypts every paste, always. Pastepile encrypts when you switch it on; unencrypted public and unlisted pastes are a feature here, not an accident. | ||
| Burn after reading | ||
| Password protection | ||
| Expiration, including never On PrivateBin the available expiry choices depend on how the instance operator configured it. | ||
| No account required | ||
| Self-hostable, open source server This is PrivateBin's whole point, and if you want to run your own paste server it is the right choice. Pastepile is a hosted service. | ||
| Public pastes, archive, and RSS PrivateBin encrypts everything, so there is deliberately nothing public to browse. | ||
| Raw plain-text endpoint for curl and scripts PrivateBin content is ciphertext on the server, so a raw plaintext URL cannot exist there. | ||
| JSON API usable directly from browser apps PrivateBin has a JSON API, but the client must implement the encryption format itself, and behavior varies by instance. Pastepile's API sends CORS headers on every response. | ||
| Syntax highlighting | ||
| Comments on pastes PrivateBin instances can enable discussions. Pastepile has no comments. | ||
| Multi-file pastes | ||
| Time-capsule pastes (sealed until a date) | ||
| AI assistant memory over MCP |
PrivateBin behavior verified against privatebin.info and the PrivateBin GitHub project in August 2026. PrivateBin instances are configured individually, so a specific instance may differ. If something here is wrong or has changed, tell us and we will fix it.
The real difference: the encryption model
PrivateBin encrypts every paste in the browser with 256-bit AES-GCM, always, and the server stores only ciphertext. That is a clean, principled design, and its cost is that nothing on a PrivateBin can be public, searchable, or fetched as raw plaintext by a script.
Pastepile makes encryption a per-paste choice. End-to-end encrypted pastes work the same way PrivateBin's do: encrypted in your browser, key in the link fragment, never sent to us, unreadable by us. Unencrypted pastes buy you the other half of a pastebin: public sharing, an archive, syntax-highlighted language pages, raw URLs for curl, and an API you can call from a browser app. You pick per paste which trade you want.
One trust caveat that applies to both, and that PrivateBin's own documentation is admirably direct about: with any web-delivered encryption, you trust the server to serve unmodified JavaScript. How ours works, and what it does not protect against, is written down in the security architecture.
When PrivateBin is the right answer
Choose PrivateBin if you want to run the server yourself on your own infrastructure, if your policy requires that every paste be encrypted with no unencrypted mode available, or if you need paste discussions. Those are real requirements and Pastepile does not serve them.
Choose Pastepile if you want a hosted service with burn-after-read, time capsules, a developer toolbox, an API with CORS, and anonymous pastes that need no account. Comparing against classic Pastebin instead? That is a different page.