Ente vs Google Photos
Ente and Google Photos are both photo management software. Ente is open source under AGPL-3.0, with 30k GitHub stars. Google Photos is a commercial product from Google.
Which to pick
- Pick Ente when
- You want a Google Photos alternative where the provider cannot see your photos.
- Pick Google Photos when
- You want automatic phone backup with strong search, especially on Android.
Side by side
End-to-end encrypted cloud apps, mainly Ente Photos and the Ente Auth two-factor authenticator, available as a paid hosted service or self-hosted.
Backs up photos and videos from phones and computers, with face and object search, shared albums and AI editing tools.
Encryption limits server-side features, and lost keys mean lost data; hosted storage is a paid subscription.
Storage counts against your Google account quota, and Google can change features and limits as it did in 2021.
Production-ready (both)
Cloud service, self-hosted server, mobile app and desktop app
Cloud service and mobile app
Dart, Flutter, TypeScript, Go and Rust
Not published
Open source, AGPL-3.0 (network copyleft)
Closed source, sold by Google
Use inside your business is unrestricted. If you change it and let customers use it over the internet, you must publish your changes.
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
30k GitHub stars
32k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
Established: started 4 years ago, latest release photos-v1.3.68.
Not known
Other comparisons
More photo management apps
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from makers' descriptions, Wikipedia, READMEs and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.