Google Photos gives you 15 GB of free storage, then charges you monthly for more. Every photo you take on an iPhone or Android goes to Google's servers, where it is used to train models and sits under terms of service that can change. For a lot of people that trade-off is fine. For parents archiving their children's photos, professionals handling client images, or anyone who has read Google's terms carefully enough to feel uncomfortable, it is not.
Immich is the open-source answer. It runs on your own server or NAS (network-attached storage, a hard drive connected to your home network), backs up your phone in the background, and presents a web and mobile interface that looks and behaves like Google Photos. The storage limit is whatever drives you have attached. The license is yours.
| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| What it is | Self-hosted photo and video management platform with automatic mobile backup |
| Built by | Alex Tran and the Immich open-source community (109,000+ GitHub stars) |
| License | AGPL-3.0 (open-source license; free to self-host, modifications must be shared) |
| Platforms | Web browser, iOS app (App Store), Android app (Play Store, F-Droid) |
| Requires | Docker Engine v25+, 6 GB RAM minimum, 2 CPU cores minimum |
| Install method | Docker Compose (recommended); also runs on Unraid, Synology, TrueNAS |
| Verdict | Install if you want Google Photos behavior with your own storage and no subscription |
What Immich actually is
Immich is a photo and video management server you run yourself. You install it on a home server, a NAS, or a rented virtual private server, and then install the mobile app on your phone. From that point on, the app backs up every new photo and video to your server automatically, the same way Google Photos or iCloud do, except the destination is hardware you own.
The web interface and mobile app are designed to feel familiar. You get an organized timeline, albums, shared albums, a map view based on GPS coordinates in your photos, and a Memories feature that surfaces photos from the same date in previous years. There is no learning curve if you are coming from Google Photos.
Immich is licensed under AGPL-3.0, an open-source license that lets you run it for free on your own hardware. If you distribute a modified version, you are required to publish those modifications. For personal and family use that condition never applies.
The project launched in 2022 and crossed 100,000 GitHub stars in mid-2025, making it one of the fastest-growing self-hosted projects in recent memory. It is actively developed, with releases shipping weekly.
What you get after installing it
Automatic backup
The mobile app backs up photos and videos in the background whenever it detects a connection. It handles HEIC and HEIF files (the photo format iPhones use by default) and converts them for browser playback without losing the originals. It also handles Live Photos (the iPhone short-video-plus-still format) and Android Motion Photos. Duplicates are detected automatically so a second backup pass does not create double entries.
Smart search and face recognition
Immich includes a machine learning component (software that learns to recognize faces and objects from examples, with no manual tagging needed) that runs locally on your server. It powers two features: smart search and face recognition.
Smart search lets you type "dog on beach" or "birthday cake" and find photos without any manual tagging. It uses a technique called CLIP (a model that learns to match words to images by looking at millions of examples) so it finds photos by visual content rather than file names or tags you added.
Face recognition clusters photos by the people in them. You give each cluster a name and from then on you can browse by person, the same way Google Photos handles People albums. All of this processing happens on your server. No image data leaves your network.
Supported formats and metadata
Immich handles standard JPEG and PNG files, RAW formats from major camera manufacturers, HEIC/HEIF from iPhones, and most common video formats. It reads EXIF metadata (the data embedded in every photo file recording date, time, camera model, and GPS coordinates) and uses it to build the map view and sort the timeline accurately.
Multi-user support
You can create accounts for family members or housemates. Each user has a private library. Partner sharing lets one user grant another read access to their library. There is also a public sharing link feature for sharing an album with someone who does not have an Immich account.
External libraries
If you already have a folder of photos organized your own way, Immich can index that folder as an external library without moving or copying the files. This is useful for photographers who maintain their own folder structure and do not want to give up control of file organization.
The install experience
The supported install path is Docker Compose. Docker is software that packages an application and all its dependencies into a container you can run on any server, without worrying about conflicting software or missing libraries. Immich's Docker Compose setup launches five containers: the main server, a machine learning server, a PostgreSQL database (an open-source database that stores all your photo metadata and user information), Redis (a caching layer that manages background processing jobs), and a storage volume.
The install takes about 15 minutes for someone comfortable with a terminal. You download two files (a compose file and an environment file), set three variables (your upload folder path, a database password, and your timezone), and run one command: docker compose up -d. The server starts and you reach the setup screen through your web browser at the server's IP address.
The minimum hardware the Immich team recommends is 6 GB of RAM and 2 CPU cores. A Raspberry Pi 5 with 8 GB RAM handles small family libraries. A NAS like a Synology DS923+, a cheap VPS (virtual private server, a rented slice of a remote machine), or an old desktop PC running Unraid handles larger collections. Hardware acceleration for the machine learning features (GPU-based processing that speeds up face recognition and smart search) is supported on NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel GPUs.
The honest install complexity: if you have never used Docker or a Linux terminal, expect to spend an hour following the documentation carefully. The Immich docs at docs.immich.app are thorough and the community on Reddit and Discord is active. For Synology and Unraid users, there are community-maintained one-click install packages that remove most of the manual steps.
One caveat the project states plainly: Immich is not itself a backup solution. It stores your photos, but if your server drive fails, those photos are gone. The recommendation is a 3-2-1 backup approach: three copies of your data, on two different media, with one copy off-site. A cheap cloud storage service or a second external drive plugged into your server handles the off-site copy.
Where it fits and what to compare it to
Google Photos (photos.google.com) is the reference point. 15 GB free, then $3/month for 100 GB or $10/month for 2 TB. The interface is polished and the machine learning is excellent. The reason to leave: your photos are on Google's infrastructure, under Google's terms, and require a subscription at any library size above 15 GB. If none of that bothers you, Google Photos is a reasonable product.
Photoprism (photoprism.app) is the other well-known self-hosted photo manager. It has a similar feature set to Immich but a more photo-catalog-oriented interface aimed at photographers rather than family backup users. It does not have a comparable mobile backup app. Where Photoprism is a gallery and search tool, Immich is closer to a full backup-plus-browse replacement for Google Photos.
Nextcloud with the Photos app covers photo management as part of a broader self-hosted cloud platform. If you already run Nextcloud for file sync, calendar, and contacts, the Photos app adds a gallery view. It is not as fully featured as Immich for photo-specific workflows like face clustering or smart search.
Ente Photos (ente.io) is a privacy-focused cloud photo service with end-to-end encryption. It is not self-hosted (unless you run their open-source server), but costs $1/month for 10 GB or $3/month for 50 GB. If self-hosting is too much infrastructure overhead, Ente is the privacy-respecting cloud alternative closest to Immich's audience.
Immich is the right choice when you want the automatic mobile backup behavior of Google Photos, you have a server or NAS already running (or are willing to set one up), and you want no monthly subscription tied to storage size.
Verdict
Install, with one condition: make sure you have a backup plan for the server itself.
Immich delivers on its core promise. The mobile app backs up photos in the background without any intervention. The web interface is clean and fast. Face recognition and smart search work well enough that most families will not miss Google Photos' AI features. HEIC and RAW support means iPhone and camera users do not need to convert anything before backing up.
The AGPL-3.0 license (an open-source license; free to use and self-host) means there is no subscription, no storage tier, and no price change waiting for you after you get attached. The 109,000+ stars and weekly release cadence indicate a project with real adoption and staying power, not a prototype someone abandoned after six months.
The caveats worth naming: you need hardware (a spare PC, a NAS, or a cheap server rental), you need to be comfortable running Docker, and you need a separate backup strategy for the server itself. None of those are unusual requirements if you have any interest in self-hosting, but they are real work.
For a family currently paying Google for extra storage, or a professional uncomfortable with their client photos sitting on Google's servers, Immich removes the subscription and the dependency in a single install. The trade-off is an afternoon of setup and a few hours a year of maintenance. For most people asking whether to leave Google Photos, that is a reasonable trade.