Immich vs LibrePhotos
Both are free/open-source alternatives to Google Photos. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Immich
TOP PICKA self-hosted photo and video backup that feels like Google Photos.
Immich is an open-source, self-hosted photo and video platform built specifically as a Google Photos-style experience you run yourself. Its mobile apps back up your camera roll automatically in the background, and the web app offers timeline browsing, albums, sharing, map view, and on-device-style machine learning for face grouping and object/text search. Your photos are stored as ordinary files on your own server, so you keep full ownership; the trade-off is that you operate the stack (server, database, and backups) yourself.
LibrePhotos
A permissively licensed, fully self-hosted photo manager.
LibrePhotos is a self-hosted photo management service, originally inspired by the discontinued Google PhotoScan/Google Photos experience, offering timeline browsing, face recognition, object and scene tagging, and search over your own library. Its MIT license makes it the most permissively licensed option here, and it is a community-driven project. It is capable but less polished than Immich or PhotoPrism, with a smaller community and a slower development pace.
Side by side
| Immich | LibrePhotos | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 94 | 80 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first | Yes | Yes |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Pricing | Free and open-source (self-host); you provide the hardware and storage | Free and open-source (self-host) |
Immich is Macrostack's recommended Google Photos alternative, so it's our pick here.
Immich
Strengths
- +Closest Google Photos-like experience among the open options
- +Automatic background camera-roll backup on iOS and Android
- +Fully open-source (AGPL-3.0), backed by FUTO
- +Photos stored as normal files on hardware you own
- +Very active development and a large community
Trade-offs
- −You run and back up the server, database, and storage
- −Fast release pace means occasional breaking changes to watch for on upgrade
- −Machine-learning features (face/object search) want a few GB of RAM to run smoothly
- −No hosted option — self-hosting is the only path
LibrePhotos
Strengths
- +Permissive MIT license
- +Face recognition, tagging, and search on your own server
- +Photos remain files on hardware you own
- +Community-driven and free to run
Trade-offs
- −Smaller community and slower development than Immich or PhotoPrism
- −Rougher, less polished interface
- −Resource-hungry during initial scanning and training
- −No first-party mobile backup app as seamless as Immich's
More Google Photos head-to-heads
Facts verified 2026-07-05. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.