Best open-source alternatives to Google Photos

Immich is a self-hosted photo and video management system designed for people who want their media library stored and accessed on their own infrastructure. It provides a mobile and web experience for uploading, browsing, backing up, and organizing photos and videos, with support for features like metadata search, albums, sharing, and facial recognition. The project is aimed at users who want a high-performance alternative to cloud photo services while retaining control over their data. The README also highlights administrative user management, OAuth support, public and partner sharing, and offline support in the mobile app, indicating that it serves both individual households and multi-user deployments.

LibrePhotos is a self-hosted photo management application aimed at users who want to organize and search personal media on their own infrastructure. It focuses on automatically enhancing large photo libraries with machine-learning features such as face recognition, object detection, semantic search, and image captioning-related capabilities. The project is built as a web application with a Django backend and a React/TypeScript frontend, and it is designed to run in Docker-based environments. It is suitable for people managing family or personal photo archives, especially those who want timeline browsing, event-based album generation, metadata search, and support for raw photos and videos. The README also points to interactive API documentation, which suggests it can be integrated with other tools.

PhotoPrism is a self-hosted photo and video management application designed for people who want a private way to browse, organize, search, and share their media. The README presents it as an AI-powered system that can tag content, recognize faces, and surface photos through powerful filtering and search, while emphasizing privacy and independence. It is aimed at users who want a browser-based experience across desktop and mobile devices, with a PWA that can be installed like a native app. The project also supports media ingestion and access through tools such as WebDAV and compatible backup apps, making it useful both as a personal photo library and as a syncing/backup hub for phones and computers.

Photoview is a self-hosted photo gallery designed for people who keep their media on a local filesystem and want a fast way to browse it. It is aimed especially at photographers, with support for large photo collections, RAW files, EXIF data, and video. The project works by scanning a configured directory, detecting media automatically, and generating thumbnails for quick browsing. It maps filesystem directories to albums, supports multiple users, and allows albums or individual files to be shared through public links, including optional password protection. The README also emphasizes face recognition, performance optimizations, and strong media access protection. It is available through Docker-based deployment and native package routes on several Linux-oriented platforms.

Ente is a privacy-focused, fully open source platform built around end-to-end encrypted storage and authentication. The README presents it as a cloud-based service that lets users keep their data without trusting the provider, while also allowing self-hosting for those who want to run it themselves. The project bundles several client applications and a server in one monorepo, spanning mobile, desktop, web, and Linux platforms. It targets users who want encrypted photo management, secure document storage, and a TOTP authenticator alternative, with features such as private sharing, collaborative albums, family plans, semantic search, and background uploads.