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PhotoPrism

★ 37k

AI-powered photo library that tags, maps, and organizes your pictures on your own server.

PhotoPrism 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. 37k stars on GitHub.

Open-source replacement for Google Photos.

Licence
AGPL-3.0
Self-hosting
Medium
The paid one costs
$10
GitHub stars
37k
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 PhotoPrism is rather than judging what you would give up. When that product gets a page, this one will link to it.

How PhotoPrism runs

Where it runs

PhotoPrism runs on your server.

Installing it

Docker Compose with MariaDB recommended, or SQLite for a smaller installation.

Where your data lives

Originals remain in the mounted originals folder; sidecars, previews, thumbnails, face embeddings, model assets, and backups live in the storage folder, while indexes, users, albums, and settings live in SQLite or MariaDB.

What setup takes

Docker Compose, persistent originals, storage, and database mounts with correct permissions, several GB of RAM or swap, and a CPU- and storage-heavy first index.

The catch compared with Flickr Pro

It is a searchable private library rather than a public photo community, so Flickr's groups, follows, discovery, comments and licensing exposure disappear.

PhotoPrism questions

Is PhotoPrism open source?

Yes — it is released under AGPL-3.0.

Can I self-host PhotoPrism?

Yes — we rate it medium to self-host, and it runs on your server. Docker Compose with MariaDB recommended, or SQLite for a smaller installation.

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