Robert Triggs / Android Authority
I love Google Photos; its ease of use and feature set are unrivaled in my opinion. However, I’m an even bigger fan of self-hosting — I use my DIY NAS to replace a considerable range of overpriced subscription services. However, so far, I haven’t been able to replace Google Photos completely, but I might have finally found a way to truly cut the cord.
See, I’m loath to fork out for Google One when I have 10TB of hard drive space on my NAS. Still, I use Google Photos to make the occasional quick edit, to help share snaps with friends and family quickly, and even duplicate a few of my most cherished memories as part of the recommended 3-2-1 backup rule. For storing most of my older snaps, I’ve been using PhotoPrism, but as good as it is as a photo library, it lacks the rich feature set of Photos, especially for managing multiple users in my home.
Would you consider hosting your own Google Photos alternative? 130 votes I'm already doing it. 32 % Yes, but it would need to be simple. 45 % No, Google Photos is amazing. 20 % I use a different cloud service. 4 %
As a replacement that’ll come much closer to Google’s feature set and setup, I’ve had my eye on Immich for a long time. This self-hosted photo library and organization tool certainly evokes a familiar look and feel, and has definitely been inspired by many of the cloud platform’s classic features.
The service reached its first stable build towards the end of 2025, and I’ve finally had the time to spin it up and see if it will replace Photos for me. Here’s how I got it working and whether you should bother spinning it up, too.
How and where can you run Immich?
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
The first question to consider when thinking about moving away from a popular service like Google Photos is: Where and how will I run my alternative?
If you have your own NAS or a little DIY mini-PC alternative, you can certainly host it yourself. The alternative, which is particularly useful if you want internet access to your photos, is to host on a virtual private server (VPS). However, the costs of a VPS plus significant online storage could be higher than paying for Google One, so the only reason to go down this route would be the privacy option.
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