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TL;DR — Pick Immich to replace the Google Photos app on your phone (best mobile auto-backup and search), PhotoPrism if you’re an archivist who wants CPU-only AI and the widest format support, and Nextcloud if you want one self-hosted cloud for files, calendar, and contacts with photos as one app among many.
Your photos are the one truly irreplaceable thing on your homelab, and the reason most people finally build one is to stop renting the shelf they sit on. The three names in every “self-hosted Google Photos” thread are Immich, PhotoPrism, and Nextcloud (its Photos + Memories apps) — and they’re built around genuinely different priorities, so the “best” one depends on what you actually want out of it.
I run Immich on my own Proxmox box, so that’s my daily driver — but here’s the honest three-way for different needs.
The short answer
- Pick Immich if you want to replace the Google Photos app on your phone: the best native mobile auto-backup, plus fast face and natural-language search.
- Pick PhotoPrism if you’re an archivist: the widest format support, CPU-only AI that runs anywhere, and the lowest day-to-day fuss.
- Pick Nextcloud if you want one self-hosted cloud for everything — files, calendar, contacts, office — with photos as a first-class app rather than the whole point.
At a glance
| Immich | PhotoPrism | Nextcloud (Photos + Memories) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary focus | Google Photos replacement (photos/video first) | Photo library & archival | Full cloud suite — photos are one app |
| Mobile auto-backup | Best-in-class native apps (reliable iOS background upload) | No first-class app (WebDAV / PWA / 3rd-party) | Yes — via the Nextcloud mobile app |
| Search | Semantic (natural language) + OCR + face | Label-based + face (not semantic) | Face/object via Recognize (CPU) |
| ML acceleration | GPU/iGPU (OpenVINO, CUDA, ROCm, NPU) or CPU | CPU-only (runs anywhere) | CPU-only (Recognize) |
| Format breadth | Broad (RAW, HEIC, video) | Widest (RAW, HEIC, JPEG-XL, Live/Motion photos) | Standard |
| Beyond photos | No — photos & video only | No — photos only | Yes — files, calendar, contacts, office |
| Resource weight | Heavier: Postgres on local SSD, 6–8 GB RAM with ML | Light–moderate (CPU ML) | Moderate–heavy (full platform) |
| License & cost | Free, open (AGPL) | Open (AGPL); optional paid membership funds extras | Free, open (AGPL); paid enterprise support |
| Best for | Replacing Google Photos on your phone | Archivists who want format breadth + low fuss | One ecosystem for everything, photos included |
The question that decides it for most people: mobile backup
If your real goal is “take a photo on my phone and have it land safely on my server without thinking,” this is where the three separate hard:
- Immich is built to be the Google Photos app. Its iOS and Android apps do reliable background auto-backup — including the notoriously fiddly iOS background upload — which is why most people switching from Google Photos land here. See the Immich on Proxmox guide for the setup.
- Nextcloud backs photos up through its general mobile app’s auto-upload. It works well and you get everything else Nextcloud does alongside it, but the photo experience is an app on a platform, not the platform itself.
- PhotoPrism has no first-class backup app. You get photos in via WebDAV, a third-party sync app (e.g. PhotoSync), or its web PWA. That’s fine for an archive you feed deliberately, and a dealbreaker if you want hands-off phone backup.
Whichever you pick, the app is not your backup — it’s the front end. Keep an independent copy of the originals (the 3-2-1 rule matters most for photos), ideally on a NAS with its own snapshots, so a bad upgrade or a corrupted database never costs you a memory.
Search & AI
- Immich has the most modern search: semantic / natural-language (“beach at sunset”), OCR (find text in images), and face recognition — and it’s the only one that GPU/iGPU-accelerates its ML, so a big library indexes fast on the right hardware. It runs CPU-only too, just slower.
- PhotoPrism does label-based tagging and face recognition with CPU-only built-in AI that runs anywhere. It’s excellent at organizing and browsing; the search is keyword/label, not conversational.
- Nextcloud adds face/object recognition through the Recognize app (CPU-only). It’s capable, but Recognize is officially maintained with limited effort (critical fixes), so treat it as a nice bonus rather than the reason to choose Nextcloud.
Beyond photos — Nextcloud’s real pitch
The honest reason to pick Nextcloud usually isn’t the photo app at all — it’s that photos ride along inside a full self-hosted cloud: file sync, calendar, contacts, an office suite, and hundreds of apps. If you want to de-Google more than just photos, one Nextcloud install covers a lot of ground, and Memories gives it a genuinely good timeline. If you only want photos, Nextcloud is heavier than it needs to be — that’s Immich or PhotoPrism territory.
Resources & stability
- Immich is the heaviest: it wants PostgreSQL on local SSD (not a network share) and roughly 6–8 GB RAM with ML enabled. It’s mature now (stable 2.0 in late 2025, 3.0 in 2026) but still ships occasional breaking releases — pin versions and read release notes before major jumps.
- PhotoPrism is the lowest-fuss: CPU-only ML, broad format support, and a reputation for stability — a “set it and let it index” archive.
- Nextcloud carries the weight of a full platform; sized right it’s fine, but it’s more moving parts than a dedicated photo app.
Who should pick what
- You want to delete the Google Photos app and never look back: Immich.
- You’re an archivist with a big, format-diverse library and want low maintenance: PhotoPrism.
- You want one self-hosted cloud for files, calendar, contacts and photos: Nextcloud.
- Can’t decide and have the RAM? Run Immich for phone backup and keep a Nextcloud for everything else — they don’t conflict.
They all install cleanly with Docker Compose, so trying one is a low-cost experiment — just point it at a copy of some photos first, not your only copy.
Related posts:
- Self-Host Your Photos with Immich — the hands-on Immich build on Proxmox
- How to Actually Use a NAS with Your Homelab — where a growing photo library should live
- Your First Docker Compose Stack — the deployment pattern all three use
- Proxmox Backup Server — back up the library you now own
- Plex vs Jellyfin (and where Emby fits) — the media-server side of self-hosting
Sources: Immich · PhotoPrism · Nextcloud · 2026 self-hosted photo comparison
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