Sustainable Substitutes for Big Tech Photo Management

Privacy-respecting, ethical alternatives to Big Tech photo managers.

  • Feasibility: How easily can the average user switch to this substitute? Higher feasibility results in a higher ranking.
  • Editor's Rating: How sustainable is the substitute? The more sustainability attributes it fulfils, the higher it is ranked.

Ente Photos

Ente Photos is a private, secure photo storage app with end-to-end encryption.

Ente Photos is fully open-source, with both client and server code available on GitHub, allowing for transparency and community contributions.
Ente Photos provides end-to-end encryption, ensuring that only you can access your photos and videos, with no third-party access.
Ente Photos can be self-hosted via Docker, offering users full control over their data and infrastructure.
Ente Photos does not include advertisements, focusing instead on user privacy and experience.
Ente Photos offers a free tier with 10GB of storage, and additional storage is available through affordable paid plans.
Website

Immich

A high-performance, self-hosted photo and video management solution.

Immich is a fully open-source project, allowing users to audit, modify, and contribute to the codebase, ensuring transparency and community-driven development.
All photos and videos are stored on your own infrastructure, meaning no third-party servers, data mining, or privacy concerns—your memories belong to you.
Immich is designed to be self-hosted, giving users complete control over their data and infrastructure, with no reliance on external cloud services.
There are no advertisements in Immich, as it is a self-hosted solution with no monetisation through ads.
Immich itself is free to use, though you may incur costs for your own hardware and maintenance.
Immich uses a modular architecture, allowing each component to be scaled independently, and separating machine learning services from the core API for better performance and reliability.
Website

How to move away from Big Tech Photo Management

Here's a guide on how to migrate away from Google Photos.

Just download all your images from Google Photos and upload them to the Photo Manager of your choice. Don't forget to delete all your content from Google Photos once migration is completed.

Suggestions and Feedback

If you have suggestions for more alternatives or general feedback, please contact me via email or create an issue over on Codeberg. Suggest Substitute on Codeberg Write an Email