The short answer: Immich is the strongest full replacement for Google Photos, with the broadest feature set and the largest community. PhotoPrism suits people who care more about fast, structured search than mobile backup convenience. Ente is the pick when end-to-end encryption is non-negotiable, even if that means a smaller self-hosting community and a newer deployment story.
At a Glance: Feature Comparison
Anyone researching Immich alternatives usually lands on the same three names, and the differences between them come down to a handful of factors: how closely they replicate Immich-vs-Google-Photos style convenience, how much hardware they need, and how much of the encryption burden falls on you versus the software.
| Feature | Immich | PhotoPrism | Ente |
| GitHub stars | ~108,000 | ~39,700 | ~22,000 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 (free, no paid tier) | AGPL-3.0 Community Edition; Essentials and Plus features paid | AGPL-3.0 |
| Mobile backup | Native iOS and Android apps, automatic background upload | PWA only; automatic backup via third-party apps like PhotoSync | Native iOS and Android apps, automatic background upload |
| AI features | CLIP semantic search, facial recognition, object and scene labels | Content and location labeling, face recognition (Plus tier) | On-device machine learning, though more limited than Immich |
| End-to-end encryption | No | No | Yes, zero-knowledge architecture |
| RAM requirement | 4 GB minimum, 8 GB or more recommended | 4 GB minimum, matched to CPU core count | Varies by deployment, Postgres and object storage add overhead |
| Docker support | Yes, official Docker Compose | Yes, official Docker Compose | Yes, official Docker Compose |
| Self-host difficulty | Moderate | Moderate | Higher, more moving parts to configure |
Immich: Best Overall for a Google Photos Replacement
Immich has crossed 108,000 GitHub stars, making it the most widely adopted option among Immich alternatives by a wide margin, distributed under AGPL-3.0 with no feature paywall. The recent v3.0 release introduced Workflows for automating actions like tagging or moving assets, along with real-time video transcoding and in-app photo editing on mobile, on top of CLIP-based semantic search, facial recognition, and a timeline and map view. Best for: users who want the fullest feature parity with Google Photos and don’t mind the higher resource use. A Contabo VPS 20 with 12 GB of RAM gives enough headroom for indexing and facial recognition without constant memory pressure.
PhotoPrism: Best for Search and Privacy-First Indexing
PhotoPrism focuses on powerful, combinable AI-powered search filters covering labels, location, resolution, color, chroma, and image quality, all without requiring a user account to browse a library, and supports WebDAV so the library can be mounted directly in Windows Explorer or macOS Finder. It runs comfortably on lower RAM than Immich, with an official minimum of 2 cores and 4 GB of memory. Tradeoff: there is no dedicated automated mobile backup app; syncing from a phone relies on third-party tools like PhotoSync connecting over WebDAV. A Contabo VPS 10 with 8 GB of RAM is enough to run PhotoPrism smoothly, even during indexing of a large library.
Ente: Best for End-to-End Encryption
Ente started as a closed-source, paid encrypted photo service, then completed its transition to a fully open source project in early 2024 when the server component, known as Museum, was released publicly alongside the existing open-source clients. Its zero-knowledge architecture encrypts photos, metadata, and even machine learning embeddings client-side before they reach the server, with apps for iOS, Android, desktop, and web sharing the same encrypted sync layer. Tradeoff: a self-hosted deployment requires a PostgreSQL database and an S3-compatible object store alongside the Museum server, and the self-hosting community is smaller and newer than Immich’s or PhotoPrism’s.
Which Is Right for You?
- Just switching from Google Photos and want the closest experience? Choose Immich — it has the mobile apps, the AI search, and the fastest development pace of the three.
- Privacy-conscious but don’t need a dedicated mobile backup app? Choose PhotoPrism — its search filters and WebDAV support cover most self-hosting use cases without the overhead of Immich’s machine learning stack.
- Is end-to-end encryption a hard requirement, even from yourself as the server operator? Choose Ente — it’s the only one of the three where the operator genuinely cannot see the photos without the user’s own keys.
- Still unsure? For most people replacing Google Photos outright, Immich remains the safest default among Immich alternatives, since it has the largest community to lean on if something breaks.
Hosting Any of These on Contabo
All three platforms run comfortably on Contabo’s Cloud VPS line, though the right tier depends on which one is being deployed. Immich, with its machine learning indexing and video transcoding, benefits from the Cloud VPS 20 plan (6 vCPU cores, 12 GB of RAM, around $7 per month), giving enough headroom for facial recognition to run without starving other services. PhotoPrism and Ente both run acceptably on the Cloud VPS 10 tier (4 vCPU cores, 8 GB of RAM, roughly $4.50 per month), though Ente’s additional PostgreSQL and MinIO containers benefit from the extra storage on the Cloud VPS 20 if the photo library is large. For context, Hetzner raised prices three times in 2026, with the most recent adjustment taking effect June 15; new orders on its cost-optimized CX line now land around €6.50 to €8 per month for a comparable 4 vCPU, 8 GB configuration, while its higher-performance CPX line saw far steeper increases, in some cases roughly doubling to tripling for the same specs. The gap between providers now depends heavily on which Hetzner tier is being compared, alongside the usual considerations of regional latency and support preferences. Whichever platform is chosen, storage planning matters more than compute once a library grows past a few thousand images — thumbnails, machine learning embeddings, and video transcodes can add up to 1.5 to 2 times the size of the original library, so pairing any of these deployments with S3-compatible Object Storage for the media itself keeps costs predictable as the library scales.
FAQ: Immich vs Alternatives
For most people replacing Google Photos, yes. Immich includes facial recognition, semantic search, and native mobile apps for free, with monthly releases that keep pace with user requests. PhotoPrism is a better fit only if lighter resource use matters more than automated mobile backup, or if its paid Plus tier is already in use for the features it unlocks. Among Immich alternatives, PhotoPrism remains the strongest option for search-first workflows rather than full feature parity.
Ente’s mobile and desktop apps cache previously synced photos locally, so already-downloaded images remain viewable offline. New uploads, downloads of unsynced items, and any sharing features require a connection to the self-hosted Museum server, since the encryption and sync logic depend on server communication to coordinate keys and metadata between devices.
For most users, Immich is the best self-hosted Google Photos alternative, given its combination of mobile apps, AI search, and active development. Those who prioritize end-to-end encryption over feature completeness should look at Ente instead, while anyone running on constrained hardware or wanting deep search filters without an account requirement may prefer PhotoPrism.
