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Immich

★ 70k

Self-hosted photo and video backup with mobile auto-upload, face recognition, and a timeline that feels exactly like Google Photos.

Immich does the job of Google Photos, self-hosted. It is AGPL-licensed, so a hosted fork has to publish its changes, and setting it up is an afternoon, not a weekend. Google Photos bills $10 for it. 70k stars on GitHub.

Open-source replacement for Google Photos.

Licence
AGPL-3.0
Self-hosting
Medium
The paid one costs
$10
GitHub stars
70k
view the code →official site →

Is it actually a replacement?

We have not written a verdict on Google Photos yet, so this page says what Immich is rather than judging what you would give up. When that product gets a page, this one will link to it.

How Immich runs

Where it runs

Immich runs on your server.

Installing it

Official Docker Compose stack with the server, machine-learning service, Redis, and PostgreSQL.

Where your data lives

Originals and generated library, upload, thumbnail, profile, video, and backup files live under the configured upload location; users, albums, metadata, and embeddings live in PostgreSQL, and ML models are cached locally.

What setup takes

Docker Compose, roughly 6–8 GB RAM, local PostgreSQL storage rather than a network share, persistent media and database paths, and TLS or a reverse proxy for remote access.

The catch compared with Flickr Pro

It is a superb private archive but does not reproduce Flickr's public social graph, groups, discovery, comments, licensing marketplace or portfolio audience.

Immich questions

Is Immich open source?

Yes — it is released under AGPL-3.0.

Can I self-host Immich?

Yes — we rate it medium to self-host, and it runs on your server. Official Docker Compose stack with the server, machine-learning service, Redis, and PostgreSQL.

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