Self-hosted alternatives to Google Photos
A private photo and video gallery with automatic phone backup. Below are 12 open source options you host on your own server — with no monthly per-user fee and full control of your data.
Immich
★ 104,174Immich is a self-hosted photo and video backup with mobile apps that upload your media automatically, just like Google Photos. It offers face recognition, object search and a timeline — all running on your own server, with no subscription or storage limit.
PhotoPrism
★ 39,890PhotoPrism organizes your photo library with AI recognition (faces, objects, places), running on your own hardware. It's an alternative to Google Photos that works well even on a Raspberry Pi.
Ente
★ 27,271Ente is an end-to-end encrypted photo platform with mobile apps that back up automatically. It's the self-hosted alternative to Google Photos with real privacy.
Thumbor
★ 10,501A smart imaging service and enables on-demand cropping, resizing, applying filters and optimizing images.
LibrePhotos
★ 7,999Photo management service with a slight focus on cool graphs (alternative to Google Photos).
Photoview
★ 6,460Simple and user-friendly photo gallery for personal servers. It is made for photographers and aims to provide an easy and fast way to navigate directories, with thousands of high resolution photos.
Lychee
★ 4,201Grid and album based photo-management-system.
Piwigo
★ 3,802Photo gallery software for the web, built by an active community of users and developers.
Nextcloud Memories
★ 3,793Fast, modern and advanced photo management suite. Runs as a Nextcloud app.
PiGallery 2
★ 2,216Directory-first photo gallery website, with a rich UI, optimised for running on low resource servers.
ChronoFrame
★ 1,846Personal gallery application with online photo management, supporting Live/Motion Photos, and explore map.
Damselfly
★ 1,771Fast server-based photo management system for large collections of images. Includes face detection, face & object recognition, powerful search, and EXIF Keyword tagging. Runs on Linux, MacOS and Windows.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a free self-hosted alternative to Google Photos?
Yes. We've gathered 12 self-hosted, open source alternatives to Google Photos — including Immich, PhotoPrism, Ente. You run all of them on your own server.
What is the best open source alternative to Google Photos?
Immich is one of the most popular (104,174 GitHub stars). The "best" depends on your case — compare the options below.
Do I need a server to replace Google Photos?
Yes. You can use a home server (homelab) or a cheap VPS (from ~€4/mo). See the hosting suggestions on this page.