Immich
A self-hosted photo and video library that backs up your phone to a server you run.
Instead of Google Photos, iCloud Photos
Screenshot from immich.app, taken 2026-10-23, shown to help you recognise the tool. It belongs to its maker. Ask us to remove it.
Immich backs up photos and videos from your phone to a server you run, then lets you browse, search and share them, including by faces and by what is in the picture. The code is AGPL-3.0, and its site names FUTO as the company behind it. Your library lives on your own server and not in someone else's cloud, which makes it the most direct answer in this directory to Google Photos.
The price is running a server and keeping it backed up, and the project itself warns that you should follow a 3-2-1 backup plan and not treat Immich as your only copy. Searching by faces and objects is heavy work, so it wants a decent machine. We did not confirm how it stores files or what it does about telemetry, and its site has a purchase link we did not look into.
- Backs up your phone's photos and videos to a server you run
- Searches by faces and by what is in the picture
- AGPL-3.0, with a warning not to treat it as your only copy
What stands out
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For comparison, we also reviewed Google Photos (16/30) as a benchmark.
