Media

4 open source tools compared. Sorted by stars — scroll down for our analysis.

Tool	Stars	Velocity	Language	License	Score
Immich Self-hosted photo/video management	95.7k	—	TypeScript	GNU Affero General Public License v3.0	74
Jellyfin Free software media system	49.6k	—	C#	GNU General Public License v2.0	74
PhotoPrism AI-powered self-hosted photos app	39.5k	+60/wk	Go	—	69
Navidrome Personal music streaming service	20.0k	+133/wk	Go	GNU General Public License v3.0	74

Our Analysis

Immich95.7k★

Immich is the self-hosted Google Photos that actually delivers on the promise. Background upload from your phone, facial recognition, smart search ("photos of dogs at the beach"), shared albums — all running on your hardware with your data. It reached stable in late 2025 and the experience is polished enough for families. Google Photos is the commercial benchmark — better ML, more storage options, but your photos feed Google's AI. Photoprism is the older self-hosted alternative with less momentum. Nextcloud has a photos module but it's an afterthought. If you want to own your photo library and have a server (NAS, old PC, VPS), Immich is a no-brainer. The mobile app is genuinely good, not "good for open source" — actually good. ML-powered search works locally. The catch: AGPL license means no building commercial services on top. You need decent hardware for the ML features — transcoding and face recognition will crush a Raspberry Pi. And backup is your responsibility — if your server dies and you didn't back up, those photos are gone.

Jellyfin49.6k★

Jellyfin is what happens when a media server respects you. Completely free, no subscriptions, no tracking, no "premium tier" dangling features behind a paywall. Fork of Emby that went fully open source and never looked back. Plex is the polished incumbent — better apps, smoother 4K transcoding, wider device support. But Plex Pass costs up to $120 lifetime and they keep adding ad-supported content nobody asked for. Emby sits in the middle with a $119 premiere license. For commercial cloud hosting, none of these compete with plain old streaming CDNs. If you're building a personal media library and own the hardware, Jellyfin is the move. It handles movies, TV, music, and live TV with a clean web UI. The catch: client apps lag behind Plex in polish, especially on smart TVs. Hardware transcoding requires manual setup. And if your family expects a "just works" Netflix-like experience, Plex still delivers that better out of the box.

PhotoPrism39.5k★

The self-hosted Google Photos for photographers who actually care about their metadata. PhotoPrism uses AI for face recognition, object detection, and automatic categorization, plus handles RAW files from every major camera. If you have 50K+ photos and refuse to give them to Google, this is your best option. Immich is the hot competitor — mobile-first with native iOS/Android apps and auto-backup. LibrePhotos is lighter but less polished. Google Photos and iCloud are the commercial defaults with unbeatable convenience. PhotoPrism's metadata editing is streets ahead of Immich. It reads EXIF, XMP, and IPTC, and the search-by-content features are genuinely useful. The web UI is clean and fast. The catch: no native mobile app — you're stuck with PWA or WebDAV, which means no auto-backup from your phone. That's a dealbreaker for most people. The project's "slow and bug-free" philosophy means features arrive slowly. And the license is AGPL with additional restrictions — read the terms carefully. If you mainly want phone photo backup, Immich is the better choice.

Navidrome20.0k★

Navidrome is the self-hosted Spotify killer for people who actually own their music. A single Go binary, 50MB of RAM, SQLite storage, and access to 50+ Subsonic-compatible music apps on every platform. Deploy it in two minutes and never think about it again. If you have a music library and want to stream it anywhere, Navidrome is the answer. Period. Jellyfin handles music as a side feature inside its media server — functional but mediocre. Plex plus Plexamp offers arguably the best mobile experience, but requires a paid Plex Pass and burns resources on video features you don't need. Funkwhale is the federated alternative for sharing, not personal streaming. The catch: Navidrome is a player, not a discovery engine. No smart playlists based on listening history, no radio stations, no podcast support. The web UI is serviceable but plain — you'll want a native Subsonic client like Symfonium (Android) or play:Sub (iOS) for the good experience. And it's GPL-3.0, which matters if you're building on top of it.