Immich vs PhotoPrism
Immich and PhotoPrism compared as self-hosted Google Photos alternatives: mobile backup, AI search and face recognition, existing-folder libraries, hardware requirements, databases, sharing, multi-user support, licensing and what the paid tiers actually unlock, as of November 2026.
Quick Answer
Immich is a Google Photos replacement: native iOS and Android apps back up your camera roll in the background, and the server adds CLIP smart search, OCR, face clustering, shared and partner albums, per-user storage quotas and OIDC login. Every feature is free under AGPL-3.0; the optional product key ($25 per user or $100 per server, one-time) only gives you a supporter badge. It wants Docker Compose on Linux, at least 6 GB of RAM (4 GB with machine learning off) and Postgres on local SSD. PhotoPrism is a library browser built around the folders you already have. It indexes originals in place, can mount them read-only, writes YAML sidecars, reads Google Photos JSON and runs on 2 cores and 3 GB of RAM with SQLite or MariaDB, from Docker or plain Linux packages. It has no native mobile app (a PWA plus WebDAV sync apps such as PhotoSync), and some features sit behind memberships: Essentials at EUR 2 a month adds User and Viewer roles and satellite maps, Plus from EUR 6 a month adds the user-management web UI. Pick Immich to get photos off phones for a family; pick PhotoPrism to organise an existing archive on modest hardware.
Last updated November 8, 2026. Covers Immich v3.3.6 (4 Nov 2026, v3.4.0-rc.3 in testing) and PhotoPrism build 261029-963b58c50 (29 Oct 2026), with Immich's product-key prices from its web purchase dialog and PhotoPrism's edition prices from photoprism.app, read in November 2026.
| Feature | Immich | PhotoPrism |
|---|---|---|
| License | AGPL-3.0, all features free | AGPL (Community Edition, ce image); standard images under the Plus License |
| Price / Paid Tiers | Free; optional one-time product key: $25 per user or $100 per server (supporter badge only) | Community free; Essentials EUR 2/mo, Plus from EUR 6/mo (billed annually); team editions from EUR 79/mo; PikaPods hosting from $6.50/mo |
| Mobile Apps & Phone Backup | Native iOS and Android apps with automatic background backup, album sync and checksum dedupe | No native app; installable PWA plus WebDAV sync apps (PhotoSync recommended) |
| Minimum Hardware | 2 cores / 6 GB RAM minimum (4 cores / 8 GB recommended); 4 GB with ML disabled; amd64 or arm64 | 2 cores / 3 GB RAM, 64-bit OS, 4 GB swap recommended; RAM should match core count |
| Database | PostgreSQL with VectorChord (bundled in Compose); 1-3 GB on local SSD | SQLite 3 or MariaDB 10.5.12+; PostgreSQL experimental since Oct 2026 |
| Install Options | Docker Compose (recommended), Kubernetes, Portainer, experimental install script, community NAS templates | Docker Compose, Linux packages (glibc 2.35+), FreeBSD ports, Raspberry Pi, NAS apps, PikaPods, DigitalOcean |
| Existing Folder Library | External libraries with import paths and exclusion globs; one owner per library; albums stored only in Immich | Indexes originals in place; read-only mode; keeps folder structure; sidecars in storage folder |
| AI Search | CLIP smart search, OCR, people, file name, path, tags, camera, dates, rating, location | Search filters plus browsing by people, places, moments, calendar, labels and folders; AI labels and captions |
| Face Recognition | Face detection plus DBSCAN-style clustering, merge, hide, birthdays; nightly job catches stragglers | People & faces in all editions; new-face clusters, naming, hiding |
| AI Models & GPU | Bundled CLIP and face models (no custom CLIP); CUDA, ROCm, OpenVINO, ARM NN, RKNN acceleration (experimental) | Labels via ONNX, Ollama or OpenAI; captions via Ollama or OpenAI; NSFW detection; NVIDIA GPU acceleration |
| Video Transcoding | Server-side transcoding; NVENC, Quick Sync, VAAPI, RKMPP hardware encoding (experimental, no Raspberry Pi) | On-demand AVC via FFmpeg; Intel, NVIDIA, VA-API, Vulkan, Apple, Raspberry Pi (experimental) encoders |
| Multi-User & Roles | Unlimited users, admin plus users, per-user storage quotas and storage labels | Community: Super Admin, Admin, Guest via CLI; Essentials adds User/Viewer; Plus adds web user management; team editions add LDAP/AD |
| Single Sign-On | OpenID Connect (Authentik, Authelia, Keycloak, Okta, Google and others), including the mobile app | OpenID Connect in Community, Essentials and Plus (per the editions table) |
| Sharing | Shared albums (editor/viewer), partner sharing, public links with expiry and password | Album and file links, download as ZIP, WebDAV upload and server |
| Editing & Metadata | Non-destructive crop, rotate, mirror on web and mobile; metadata edits stored in DB and XMP sidecars | Metadata editing, batch edit, YAML sidecars; rotating updates the Exif header of the original |
| Formats (RAW, HEIC, Live Photos) | HEIC, HEIF, AVIF, JPEG XL, PSD, RAW (RAW/RW2 and more), TIFF, WebP, videos | JPEG, PNG, HEIC, JPEG XL, RAW, videos, Live and Motion Photos, 360-degree panoramas, PDF; vector graphics on Plus |
| Maps & Geocoding | Reverse geocoding to city, state and country; map view | Hosted OSM-based vector map for all; 3D vector and satellite maps plus unlimited geocoding for members |
| Built-in Database Backups | Automatic daily DB dump at 02:00, keeps 14, restore from Administration > Maintenance | Manual and scheduled database backups in all editions |
| Release Cadence (Nov 2026) | v3.3.6 stable (4 Nov 2026); v3.4.0-rc.3 (6 Nov 2026); v3.0.0 on 2 Jul 2026 | Build 261029-963b58c50 (29 Oct 2026); dated builds roughly monthly |
Immich
Open-source, self-hosted photo and video management backed by FUTO. A TypeScript server, a Python machine-learning container and Postgres with the VectorChord extension power native iOS and Android apps that back up the camera roll automatically, plus a web app with smart search, face clustering, shared albums and non-destructive editing.
Pros
- Native iOS and Android apps with automatic foreground and background backup, album selection, Wi-Fi-only by default and checksum deduplication against assets already on the server
- Every feature is free: the $25 per-user or $100 per-server product key is a one-time, optional purchase that unlocks nothing beyond a supporter badge
- CLIP smart search in Postgres via VectorChord, plus OCR, people, path, camera, tag, rating and location filters, with multilingual CLIP models available
- Built for households: multiple users with storage quotas, shared albums with editor or viewer roles, one-way partner sharing of a whole library and public links with expiry and passwords
- Daily automatic database dumps (14 kept by default) with restore from the web UI, plus a duplicates utility, locked folder and OIDC login
- Very active project: v3.0 shipped in July 2026 and stable patch releases plus release candidates arrive every week or two
Cons
- Needs at least 6 GB of RAM (8 GB recommended) and 2 to 4 cores; 4 GB only works with machine learning disabled
- Docker Compose only, and Immich strongly recommends Linux; non-Linux hosts and Docker inside LXC get reduced support
- Postgres must sit on local SSD storage and never on a network share, which complicates NAS-only setups
- Built around its own upload library: external libraries belong to a single user, albums are Immich-only, and read-only external files can't have metadata edited
- Hardware transcoding and ML acceleration are marked experimental, and neither supports the Raspberry Pi
Best For
Households and small groups replacing Google Photos or iCloud Photos, where phones are the main source of pictures and automatic backup, face search and shared albums matter most.
PhotoPrism
AI-powered, privacy-first photo and video browser from PhotoPrism UG in Berlin. A Go application that indexes your existing originals folder in place, with face recognition, label and caption generation, interactive world maps and a PWA, distributed as a free AGPL Community Edition plus paid memberships and team editions.
Pros
- Indexes the folder structure you already have and can run fully read-only against originals, with sidecars written to a separate storage folder
- Lighter footprint: 2 cores and 3 GB of RAM minimum with SQLite or MariaDB, and it runs from Docker, Linux packages, FreeBSD ports, a Raspberry Pi image or most NAS platforms
- Strong photographer features: RAW and JPEG XL with automatic JPEG sidecars, stacks, YAML and XMP sidecars, Google Photos JSON import, 360-degree panoramas and up to 900 MP images
- Flexible AI: labels from ONNX, Ollama or OpenAI, caption generation through Ollama or OpenAI, NSFW detection, and NVIDIA GPU acceleration
- Hosted maps and reverse geocoding are included, so no map API key is required; members get 3D vector and satellite maps
- On-demand transcoding to MPEG-4 AVC with Intel, NVIDIA, VA-API, Vulkan, Apple and experimental Raspberry Pi encoders, falling back to software automatically
Cons
- No native mobile app: phones use the PWA or third-party WebDAV sync apps such as PhotoSync, some of whose transfer options need a paid upgrade
- Community Edition limits roles to Super Admin, Admin and Guest; User and Viewer roles need Essentials (EUR 2/month) and the user-management web UI needs Plus (from EUR 6/month)
- Standard Docker images ship under the Plus License; the pure-AGPL build is the separate ce tag
- Maps and reverse geocoding call PhotoPrism's API and MapTiler, so they need outbound internet access, and the free tier's geocoding is rate-limited
- PostgreSQL support is only experimental (October 2026) and MySQL 8 is no longer supported
Best For
Photographers and archivists with a large existing folder of photos, RAW files and scans who want AI search, faces and maps on top of read-only originals, on modest hardware or without Docker.
Phone backup: Immich's native apps vs PhotoPrism's PWA and WebDAV
This is the biggest practical difference. Immich ships native iOS and Android apps whose main job is backup. You choose which device albums to upload (and exclude others, useful on iOS where a photo can sit in several albums). The app hashes each file and skips anything already on the server, whether it came from the CLI, the web or another phone. Uploads run when you open the app and periodically in the background, Wi-Fi-only by default. Album sync can recreate your phone's albums on the server, one way. The usual mobile caveats apply and Immich documents them: iOS decides when background tasks run, and some Android vendors kill background workers unless you disable battery optimisation. PhotoPrism has no app-store app. It offers an installable Progressive Web App, which needs a dedicated domain with HTTPS, and recommends WebDAV sync apps for uploads, PhotoSync in particular. PhotoSync works well, but it is a third-party app, and PhotoPrism notes that some of its transfer options, WebDAV and SMB included, may need an upgrade after the free trial. Its docs also warn that iOS may convert files to a more compatible format when you upload through Safari or the PWA, so the server stores the converted copy. If several non-technical people need automatic backup, Immich wins outright.
Existing libraries: indexing in place vs Immich's upload-first model
PhotoPrism was designed to sit on top of the folders you already have. You mount one or more host folders under /photoprism/originals, and it indexes them, keeps the folder structure browsable, and by default writes thumbnails and sidecars to a separate storage folder so originals can be mounted read-only. Setting PHOTOPRISM_READONLY disables everything that writes to originals: uploads, WebDAV and deletes. Even outside read-only mode, PhotoPrism lists the few cases where it touches originals, such as rotating an image (which updates its Exif header) or unstacking files that were stacked by name. YAML sidecars capture manual edits as a backup, and Google Photos JSON metadata is read on import. Immich's own library lives in UPLOAD_LOCATION, by default under random UUID file names unless you enable a storage template. Existing folders come in as external libraries: import paths are scanned recursively, glob exclusion patterns skip files, and a file deleted from disk goes to the trash on the next rescan. The limits matter for archives. Each external library belongs to one user. Immich has no official way to turn folders into albums. Duplicate checks are per library, not global. Metadata for files in read-only libraries can't be edited because Immich can't write XMP sidecars there. For a curated archive, PhotoPrism respects your structure more.
Hardware, databases and running costs
Immich's requirements page asks for at least 6 GB of RAM and 2 cores, recommends 8 GB and 4 cores, and says 4 GB works only with machine learning disabled. Since v3 the machine-learning container on amd64 needs an x86-64-v2 CPU, which covers most chips from about 2012 onward; v2.7.5 was the last release for older CPUs. Postgres with the VectorChord extension is mandatory and bundled in the Compose file. Its data is typically 1 to 3 GB and must sit on local SSD, never a network share. Thumbnails and transcodes add 10 to 20 percent to library size. Immich strongly recommends a Linux host and calls Docker Desktop on Windows or macOS a poor experience. PhotoPrism asks for 2 cores, 3 GB of RAM and a 64-bit OS, with at least 4 GB of swap and RAM matching the core count. It supports SQLite for small libraries and MariaDB 10.5.12+ for anything with concurrent users, and the 29 October 2026 build added experimental PostgreSQL. You can also skip Docker entirely with its Linux tarballs or FreeBSD ports. Money is simple: self-hosted Immich costs nothing beyond hardware, and its own FAQ warns that self-hosting rarely saves money once you count backup storage and time. PhotoPrism Community is free; Essentials costs EUR 24 a year and Plus starts at EUR 72 a year.
AI search, faces and machine learning
Immich's smart search uses CLIP: every image becomes an embedding stored in Postgres via VectorChord, and your text query is embedded and compared against it, so searches like 'dog on a beach' work without tags. Immich shows no generated labels or descriptions you can browse. You can switch to larger or multilingual CLIP models from a curated list, but not bring your own. Alongside that sit OCR text search, people, file name and full-path search, camera, tags, star ratings, dates and reverse-geocoded places. Face recognition clusters detected faces with a DBSCAN-derived algorithm, needs three similar faces (by default) before creating a person, and runs a nightly pass to pick up stragglers. You can merge people, hide them or set birthdays. A machine-learning duplicates utility suggests which copy to keep and merges albums, tags and favourites into it. GPU acceleration covers CUDA, ROCm, OpenVINO, ARM NN and RKNN, marked experimental. PhotoPrism takes a different route. It generates browsable labels from ONNX models, Ollama or OpenAI, writes captions through Ollama or OpenAI, flags NSFW content, recognises faces in every edition, and supports NVIDIA GPUs. Its October 2026 build also added MCP tools and OAuth so AI assistants can search a library, on by default for eligible users. Choose Immich for free-text search, PhotoPrism for labels you can see and edit.
Users, sharing and what you actually pay for
Immich treats multi-user as a core feature. The first account becomes admin and creates the rest, sets per-user storage quotas in GiB and storage labels, and can schedule deletions (seven days by default). Sharing works at three levels: albums shared with other users as editors or viewers, partner sharing that exposes your whole library one way, and public links with expiry dates and passwords. OIDC login works with Authentik, Authelia, Keycloak, Okta, Google and others, including in the mobile app via its custom redirect URI. A PIN-protected Locked Folder hides sensitive assets from normal views. All of this is free. FUTO funds Immich through optional lifetime product keys, $25 per user or $100 per server, and both the web dialog and the docs say purchases add no features. PhotoPrism's editions table is where the paid tiers show up. Community includes OIDC, faces, maps and album links, but its roles stop at Super Admin, Admin and Guest, managed from the CLI. Essentials (EUR 2 a month, billed annually) adds User and Viewer roles, satellite and 3D maps, and unlimited geocoding. Plus (from EUR 6 a month) adds the web UI for accounts and sessions plus vector graphics support. Team editions start at EUR 79 a month for up to 10 users and add LDAP and Active Directory. For a family of five, Immich costs nothing; PhotoPrism needs at least Essentials.
Verdict
Choose Immich if the job is getting photos off phones. Its native apps back up the camera roll in the background, skip files the server already has, and mirror device albums, and the server gives each family member their own library with storage quotas, shared albums and partner sharing. Nothing is paywalled; the $25 or $100 key is a thank-you. Budget a Linux box with 8 GB of RAM, Docker Compose and Postgres on local SSD. Choose PhotoPrism if you already have a well-organised archive (years of folders, RAW files from a camera, scans, Google Takeout exports) and want to browse, tag, map and search it without handing the files over. It mounts originals read-only, writes YAML sidecars, reads Google Photos JSON, runs on 3 GB of RAM with SQLite, and installs without Docker if you prefer. Pay for Essentials (EUR 2 a month) only if you need User and Viewer roles for other people, or Plus for the account-management UI. If phones and a large archive both matter, a common pattern is Immich for the household's phones with the archive mounted as a read-only external library. That works, with one caveat: albums and edits for external files live only in Immich.