Worth Hosting · 02 · 18-09-2026

Immich

Paying every month just to keep your own photos? Host them instead.

What it is

Free, open source photo and video backup that runs on your own machine. It looks and works like the apps you're paying for, and the phone app backs up every photo automatically.

Search for what's in the picture

Searching for a dog on the beach returns a grid of dogs on beaches — "A dog on the beach". Nobody named these photos; it found them by what's in them.

Faces, places, memories

The Explore page with recognised people and places — It recognises faces, so every photo of one person is a tap away, and it puts your photos on a map.

A map of Europe with photo counts clustered by city — It recognises faces, so every photo of one person is a tap away, and it puts your photos on a map.

Add memories from years ago on the same day, and there's very little left that the paid services do and this doesn't.

Why host it

No storage subscription, and your photos live on a drive you own. Run it in Docker on a PC, a Mac or a home server.

Screens are from Immich's own public demo.

Before you host

Costs: Nothing, beyond the machine and the storage
Licence: AGPL-3.0, open source
Runs on: Docker. Docker Desktop on Mac or Windows is fine for trying it; Immich recommends Linux for a long-term home
Apps: iPhone and Android, with automatic backup
Worth knowing: It's a backup of your photos only if the drive it runs on is backed up too.
Checked: 18-09-2026