Immich: Your Photos, Your Server, No Subscription

Google Photos charges $100/year for 2TB. Immich is free, self-hosted, and gives you unlimited storage.

1. The Photo Storage Problem

Modern smartphones take 5-10GB of photos per year. Over 5-10 years, that's 50-100GB of memories.

Cloud solutions:

• Google Photos: $100/year for 2TB
• iCloud: $120/year for 2TB
• Amazon Photos: $100/year for unlimited (Prime required)
• OneDrive: $100/year for 1TB

The catch: your photos are on someone else's server. Privacy concerns, account bans, price hikes — you don't control your memories.

Immich offers: unlimited photo storage, free, self-hosted, with AI features.

2. Features

2.1 Core Features

• Photo backup — Automatic from mobile apps
• Album management — Organize by date, location, custom albums
• Sharing — Share albums with family/friends
• Search — AI-powered face recognition, object detection, location search
• Map view — See photos on a world map
• Memories — "On this day" feature
• RAW support — Professional camera formats
• Video support — Full video playback and backup

2.2 AI Features

• Face recognition — Automatic person detection and grouping
• Object detection — Search for "dog", "car", "beach"
• Location search — Find photos by place
• Smart albums — Auto-categorized by AI
• Duplicate detection — Find and remove duplicates

2.3 Mobile Apps

• iOS app — Auto backup, manual upload
• Android app — Background backup, selective sync
• Cross-platform — Works with any device

3. Technical Stack

| Component | Technology |
|-----------|-----------|
| Backend | Node.js + TypeScript |
| Frontend | React + TypeScript |
| Mobile | Flutter (iOS + Android) |
| Database | PostgreSQL |
| Storage | Local filesystem or S3 |
| AI/ML | TensorFlow.js, CLIP |
| Search | Meilisearch |

4. Deployment

4.1 Docker Compose (Recommended)

version: '3'
services:
  immich:
    image: ghcr.io/immich-app/immich-server:release
    ports:
      - "2283:3001"
    volumes:
      - ./upload:/usr/src/app/upload
    environment:
      - DB_HOSTNAME=database
      - DB_USERNAME=immich
      - DB_PASSWORD=secret
      - DB_DATABASE_NAME=immich
      - REDIS_HOSTNAME=redis
    depends_on:
      - database
      - redis

database:

    image: postgres:14

    environment:

      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=secret

      - POSTGRES_USER=immich

      - POSTGRES_DB=immich

    volumes:

      - ./db:/var/lib/postgresql/data

redis:

    image: redis:6.2

docker-compose up -d
Access at http://localhost:2283

4.2 System Requirements

| Scale | CPU | RAM | Storage |
|-------|-----|-----|---------|
| Personal (10K photos) | 2 cores | 4GB | 100GB |
| Family (50K photos) | 4 cores | 8GB | 500GB |
| Power user (100K+) | 8 cores | 16GB | 2TB+ |

4.3 Backup Strategy

# Backup database
pg_dump immich > backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).sql

Backup photos
tar czf photos-backup-$(date +%Y%m%d).tar.gz /path/to/upload

Restore
psql immich < backup-20260719.sql

5. Cost Comparison

For 2TB of photos over 3 years:

| Solution | Annual Cost | 3-Year Cost |
|----------|-------------|-------------|
| Immich (self-hosted) | $50 VPS | $150 |
| Google Photos | $100 | $300 |
| iCloud | $120 | $360 |
| Amazon Photos | $100 | $300 |

3-year savings: $150-$210

Plus: unlimited storage (no 2TB cap), full privacy, no account bans.

6. Migration from Google Photos

6.1 Export from Google

1. Go to https://takeout.google.com
2. Select Google Photos
3. Choose export format (original quality)
4. Download ZIP files

6.2 Import to Immich

# Unzip Google Takeout
unzip google-takeout.zip -d /path/to/immich/upload

Immich will auto-index new files
Or use CLI tool for large imports

6.3 What Transfers

• ✅ Photos and videos
• ✅ Metadata (date, location)
• ✅ Albums (manual recreation)
• Shared albums (need manual reshare)
• ❌ Google-specific features (Memories need retraining)

7. Use Cases

✅ Good For

• Families — Share photos without cloud subscriptions
• Photographers — RAW file storage and organization
• Privacy-conscious — Keep photos on your own server
• Large collections — Unlimited storage (just add disks)
• Multi-device — iOS + Android + web access

Limitations

• Requires server maintenance
• No built-in photo editing (basic only)
• AI features need server resources
• Mobile apps still maturing

8. Verdict

Immich is the most complete Google Photos alternative available today.

What makes it significant:

• Active development (100+ contributors)
• Regular releases (weekly updates)
• Strong community (30K+ GitHub stars)
• Feature-parity with Google Photos improving monthly

Honest limitations:

• Self-hosting requires technical knowledge
• AI features need decent hardware
• Mobile apps not as polished as Google

Bottom line:

If you're tired of paying $100/year for cloud photo storage and want full control over your memories, Immich is worth the setup effort.

Try it: https://github.com/immich-app/immich