Immich

Immich is a self-hosted Google Photos replacement: automatic backup from your phone, a fast timeline, shared albums, a map view, and search by faces, places, objects or plain-language description, with the machine learning running on your own server. AGPL-3.0, and stable since its 2.0 release in October 2025.

Docker Compose is the recommended install. Plan for at least 6 GB of RAM (8 recommended) and 2 cores, keep the Postgres database on a local SSD rather than a network share, and budget 10 to 20% extra disk for thumbnails and transcoded video on top of the library itself. Since v3, the machine-learning container needs a newer x86 CPU (x86-64-v2).

Every feature is free, and the team has promised nothing will ever go behind a paywall. You can buy a lifetime supporter key ($25 for one user, $100 for a family), and it unlocks no extra features. Solo users and families get the most here. It has multi-user and OAuth login, but it's built for households, not company-wide photo management.

The catch: you're now the backup. Follow 3-2-1 (three copies, two kinds of media, one offsite), because a self-hosted photo library with one copy is one dead drive from gone. Major versions also break third-party API integrations, so check your add-ons before upgrading.