Lychee

Judgement

What it is

Complete system

What it does

A self-hosted photo management and gallery app for uploading, organising into albums and sharing photos from your own server.

Adopt it when

You want a clean web gallery to share albums from your own hosting, such as a photographer's portfolio.

Watch out

Gallery-focused, without the phone backup and AI search features of Immich.

Ready for

Production-ready

Runs as

Self-hosted server

Built with

PHP, Laravel, Vue and TypeScript

How established

Established: started 8 years ago, latest release v7.12.0.

What the license allows

You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.

Judged on 2026-11-03 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

Follow it down: Lychee → Php-src → GCC → LLVM project → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

Open-source alternatives to Lychee

1. 1
   Immich immich-app

   High performance self-hosted photo and video management solution.

   Complete system Production-ready You want Google Photos-style backup and search on your own server for a household or small group.

   ★ 118k AGPL-3.0 TypeScript Active, pushed today
2. 2
   Ente ente

   💚 End-to-end encrypted cloud for everything.

   Complete system Production-ready You want a Google Photos alternative where the provider cannot see your photos.

   ★ 30k AGPL-3.0 Dart Active, pushed today
3. 3
   LibrePhotos LibrePhotos

   A self-hosted open source photo management service.

   Complete system Usable You want a private Google Photos alternative and have hardware for the machine learning jobs.

   ★ 8.1k MIT Python Active, pushed today
4. 4
   Lap julyx10

   An offline-first photo manager for large local libraries

   Complete system Usable You keep a large photo library on disk and want private organisation without a server or cloud.

   ★ 4.2k GPL-3.0 Rust Active, pushed today
5. 5
   Pho fregie

   A serverless application for viewing and synchronizing photos to cloud storage

   Complete system Usable You have a NAS and want simple phone photo backup without hosting Immich.

   ★ 1.2k GPL-3.0 Dart Active, pushed 14 days ago
6. 6
   FerrumPix Bitpainter75

   FerrumPix is a desktop photo management and editing application for Linux, Windows and macOS.

   Complete system Experimental You self-host photos on Immich or Nextcloud and want a desktop app to manage and edit them.

   ★ 745 GPL-3.0 Visual Basic .NET Active, pushed today
7. 7
   AfterFrame YIWANG3

   Local-first photo library for Mac and Windows. Browse, cull and search thousands of photos and RAWs, find people and places on-device, and edit with LUTs, text, stickers, camera frames and collages. Agent-ready over MCP.

   Complete system Experimental A photographer wants fast culling and light editing of large exports without a cloud service.

   ★ 260 MIT JavaScript Active, pushed today
8. 8
   CalibRaw Duecki1

   Free, open-source RAW editor for Linux, Android, Windows and macOS. GPU-accelerated, non-destructive, with masks, HDR merge and local AI.

   Complete system Experimental You want a free RAW developer that also runs on Android.

   ★ 258 GPL-3.0 Rust Active, pushed today

Commercial photo management apps

1. 1
   Google Photos Google

   Edit and enhance photos with AI-powered features like Magic Eraser and Unblur on Google Photos. Store, organize & search your memories.

   Complete system Production-ready You want automatic phone backup with strong search, especially on Android.

   32k readers a month Commercial
2. 2
   iCloud Photos Apple Inc.

   View, organize, and share photos and videos with iCloud Photos on the web. Changes will sync across your devices with iCloud.

   Complete system Production-ready Your household uses Apple devices and wants photos synced everywhere without extra apps.

   19k readers a month Since 2011 Commercial
3. 3
   Amazon Photos Amazon

   Amazon Photos offers free online photo storage to Prime members, who can save and share unlimited photos on desktop, mobile, and tablet.

   Complete system Production-ready You already pay for Prime and want a free backup of your photo library alongside another service.

   Commercial