Immich
Self-hosted photo and video backup with face recognition and semantic search.
why this verdict
Keep it — Google has not replaced it
Google's version overlaps, but does not finish the productivity job, so this one is still worth keeping open.
- A named launch, not a vibe named, unlinked
- Google Photos and iCloud offering AI search and unlimited convenience for a few dollars a month. Google, May 20, 2025 — no announcement link recorded yet.
- How much of the job it covers not the job editorial call
- Parts of it. The job still needs the tool to get finished.
- Is there a free way to do it? yes
- 3 of 3 listed replacements have a usable free tier: Google Photos, Ente and PhotoPrism.
- What the call is worth nothing to cancel
- No paid entry tier tracked, so there is no subscription to cancel.
- Threatened by
- Since
- May 20, 2025
- List price
- free
- Per year
- —
The backstory
Immich is a self-hosted replacement for Google Photos, with automatic phone backup, face grouping and machine-learning search that finds a photo of a dog on a beach without any tagging. It became one of the most popular self-hosting projects because the alternative means handing a decade of family photographs to a company that changes its storage pricing periodically. It cannot beat Google on convenience and does not need to, because the people running it have already decided that trade.
Escape hatches
Far more convenient, with excellent AI search
photos.google.com open_in_newEnd-to-end encrypted photo storage, hosted or self-run
ente.io open_in_newSelf-hosted photo management with AI tagging
photoprism.app open_in_new3 of 3 replacements have a usable free tier.