If you’re looking to take back control of your photos and ditch Google Photos or iCloud, the good news is that self-hosted alternatives have never been better. The bad news is that choosing between them isn’t straightforward — Immich, PhotoPrism, and Piwigo each take a very different approach to photo management. This guide breaks down exactly what each app offers, where it falls short, and which one is the right fit for your setup.
Immich: The Google Photos Replacement
Immich arrived in 2021 and has rapidly become the most talked-about self-hosted photo solution, amassing over 90,000 GitHub stars — an extraordinary growth rate for an open-source project. It is free and open-source under the AGPL-3.0 licence, with an optional $100 one-time server licence that unlocks additional commercial features. Development is now backed by FUTO, giving the project financial stability that many open-source alternatives lack.
The core appeal of Immich is its mobile experience. Both iOS and Android apps offer seamless automatic backup, a polished timeline view, and an interface that feels deliberately familiar to anyone migrating from Google Photos. This alone sets it apart from most self-hosted alternatives, which treat mobile as an afterthought.
What Immich Does Well
Beyond auto-backup, Immich includes a genuinely impressive feature set: CLIP-based smart search lets you search photos by description rather than just filename or tag, face recognition groups people across your library, shared albums enable collaboration, and there is a map view showing where photos were taken. Live Photos are supported, as is RAW file ingestion, and machine learning tasks can be hardware-accelerated on compatible systems.
Development pace is fast — meaningful updates ship regularly, which means bugs are fixed quickly but also means the app is still maturing in some areas.
Immich’s Limitations
Immich is not lightweight. Docker Compose is required, and the recommended minimum is 6 GB of RAM. If you’re running it on a low-power home server or a Raspberry Pi, you will likely struggle. The machine learning features (smart search, face recognition) add further resource demands. It is also a relatively young project — migration tooling and long-term stability are improving but not yet as battle-hardened as older alternatives.
PhotoPrism: Built for Serious Photographers
PhotoPrism has been in development since 2018 and takes a more considered approach to photo organisation, particularly for users with large or technically complex libraries. It is free to use in community form, with a commercial PhotoPrism+ licence available for teams or those who want premium support.
Where PhotoPrism genuinely excels is RAW file handling. It processes over 30 RAW formats via LibRaw, making it the strongest choice of the three if you shoot in RAW regularly with a DSLR or mirrorless camera. The AI layer is powered by TensorFlow and includes photo classification, object detection, and face recognition.
The Trade-offs With PhotoPrism
In practice, PhotoPrism’s face recognition is less reliable than Immich’s, with known issues around accurate grouping and re-identification across different lighting conditions or angles. The interface is web-based and functional, but it lacks the polished mobile experience that Immich delivers — there is no official native mobile backup app. Instead, uploads rely on WebDAV or third-party apps, which adds friction for day-to-day use.
PhotoPrism works very well as a read-only archive or library tool, particularly for photographers who ingest files from a camera rather than a smartphone. For families wanting a shared, always-on backup solution that mirrors the simplicity of Google Photos, it is not the best fit.
Piwigo: The Photo Gallery Platform
Piwigo has been around since 2002, making it by far the oldest of the three. That longevity comes with genuine advantages: it is mature, stable, and has a large ecosystem of plugins and themes built up over more than two decades. It is free and open-source under the GPL-2.0 licence, and a commercial SaaS version is available for those who do not want to self-host.
Piwigo is also the easiest to install. It runs on PHP and MySQL — the standard web hosting stack — meaning you do not need Docker, and it will run comfortably on modest hardware. This makes it accessible to users who are not comfortable with containers or command-line configuration.
Where Piwigo Falls Short
The trade-off is that Piwigo is a photo gallery and sharing platform, not a personal backup solution. There is no AI or machine learning — no face recognition, no smart search, no automatic classification. There is also no native mobile app for automatic backup. If your goal is to preserve every photo taken on your phone, Piwigo is not designed for that workflow.
Where Piwigo shines is in sharing: public galleries, curated albums for family or clients, and controlled access to collections. If you want to replace a platform like SmugMug or Flickr rather than Google Photos, Piwigo is a strong, stable choice.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Feature | Immich | PhotoPrism | Piwigo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile auto-backup | ✓ Native iOS & Android | ✗ WebDAV / third-party only | ✗ No |
| Face recognition | ✓ Reliable | △ Available, less reliable | ✗ No |
| Smart search | ✓ CLIP semantic search | △ TensorFlow classification | ✗ No |
| RAW support | △ Basic RAW | ✓ 30+ formats via LibRaw | ✗ Limited |
| Ease of install | Moderate (Docker Compose) | Moderate (Docker) | Easy (PHP/MySQL) |
| Hardware requirements | 6 GB RAM minimum | 2–4 GB RAM typical | Low — runs on shared hosting |
| Active development | ✓ Very active | ✓ Active | △ Stable, slower pace |
| Best for | Families, mobile-first users | Photographers, RAW archives | Public galleries, sharing |
Which Should You Choose?
Choose Immich if…
You want a genuine replacement for Google Photos or iCloud. Immich is the right choice for most home users, families, and anyone whose primary photo source is a smartphone. The native mobile apps with automatic backup, combined with smart search and face recognition, make it the most complete daily-driver experience of the three. You will need a capable home server — 6 GB of RAM is the floor, not the ideal — but if your hardware is up to it, Immich is where self-hosted photo management has arrived.
Choose PhotoPrism if…
You are a photographer with a large RAW library who cares more about organisation and archival than mobile backup. PhotoPrism’s superior RAW format support and web-based interface make it a strong tool for managing thousands of camera files, particularly in a read-only or archive context. If you ingest files from a camera card rather than a phone, and do not need seamless mobile sync, PhotoPrism is the more suitable tool.
Choose Piwigo if…
Your goal is sharing photos publicly or with a defined audience rather than backing up your personal library. Piwigo’s gallery-first design, plugin ecosystem, and simple installation make it the best option for photographers or hobbyists who want to present curated collections online. It is also the right pick if you need something that runs on standard PHP hosting without Docker. Just go in knowing it is not built for personal backup or AI-powered organisation.
Final Verdict
For the majority of home users and families looking to escape the Google Photos ecosystem, Immich is the clear winner. Its mobile apps, smart search, face recognition, and active development make it the most capable all-round solution available today. PhotoPrism remains the tool of choice for serious photographers with demanding RAW workflows. Piwigo fills a different niche entirely — it is a gallery and sharing platform with a long track record, and it excels in that role. Pick the one that matches how you actually use your photos, rather than the one with the most features on paper.
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Related Immich Guides
- Immich: The Complete Self-Hosted Google Photos Alternative
- What Is Immich? The Self-Hosted Google Photos Alternative
- How to Install Immich with Docker Compose
- Immich vs Google Photos: Is Self-Hosting Worth It?
- How to Set Up Immich Mobile Backup on iPhone and Android
- How to Run Immich on Proxmox: LXC Container Setup
- How to Put Immich Behind a Reverse Proxy with SSL
- Immich Hardware Requirements: Raspberry Pi, NUC, or NAS?
- Immich Face Recognition and Smart Search: How to Enable It
- How to Back Up Immich: Protecting Your Photo Library
