Google Photos vs Immich
Google Photos and Immich are both photo management software. Google Photos is a commercial product from Google. Immich is open source under AGPL-3.0, with 118k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Google Photos when
- You want automatic phone backup with strong search, especially on Android.
- Pick Immich when
- You want Google Photos-style backup and search on your own server for a household or small group.
Side by side
Backs up photos and videos from phones and computers, with face and object search, shared albums and AI editing tools.
A self-hosted photo and video library with automatic phone backup, timeline, albums, sharing, face recognition and AI search, positioned as a Google Photos replacement.
Storage counts against your Google account quota, and Google can change features and limits as it did in 2021.
Needs a reasonably capable server and your own backup plan; the project itself warns not to treat it as your only copy.
Production-ready (both)
Cloud service and mobile app
Self-hosted server and mobile app
Not published
TypeScript, NestJS, SvelteKit, Dart and PostgreSQL
Closed source, sold by Google
Open source, AGPL-3.0 (network copyleft)
Closed source: you use it under the maker's terms and cannot change or resell the code.
Use inside your business is unrestricted. If you change it and let customers use it over the internet, you must publish your changes.
32k Wikipedia readers a month on phones
118k GitHub stars
Not known
Established: started 4 years ago, latest release v3.3.5.
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.