The best self-hosted photo backup in 2026
If you want your photos out of Google Photos or iCloud without losing automatic phone backup, face search and a fast timeline, three open-source apps dominate the conversation in 2026: Immich, PhotoPrism and Lychee. They solve different problems, so «best» depends on what you actually need.
All three keep original files on disk in a standard structure — you can walk away with your library at any time. That is the whole point of self-hosting photos.
Immich
The closest thing to a drop-in Google Photos replacement: excellent mobile apps with background upload, machine-learning face and object search, shared albums and a timeline that feels native. It moves fast (frequent releases) — which also means you should stay reasonably current with updates. Needs more RAM than a simple gallery because of the ML jobs.
PhotoPrism
Stronger as a library manager than as a phone-backup pipeline: superb metadata handling, geodata maps and a polished review workflow for large existing archives. Mobile backup exists via third-party sync, but it is not as seamless as Immich's first-party apps.
Lychee
The lightweight option: a clean, fast web gallery for organizing and sharing albums. No ML, no phone auto-backup — if you mainly want to present and share curated albums with minimal resource use, this is the honest choice.
Immich. For the typical «replace Google Photos» case, Immich wins on mobile backup and search. If you are curating a large existing archive instead, look at PhotoPrism first.
Every app above is open-source — you can run it yourself on a VPS, or let us run it for you: one click, your own subdomain, TLS, daily encrypted backups, EU data centers, operated from Switzerland. Free trial, no credit card.
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