Immich vs Google Photos: Why Self-Hosting Your Photo Library Wins in 2026

Immich is the better choice if you own a machine that stays powered on and you care where your photos live. It gives you the parts of Google Photos people actually use every day, mobile auto backup, face grouping, map view, albums and shared links, without a storage meter that raises your bill as your library grows. Google Photos still wins on zero maintenance and on search that understands a sentence. If you are willing to spend one evening on setup and roughly an hour a quarter on updates, Immich replaces it. TL;DR by reader profile: Family archivist with 15 years of photos (Marta, two phones, one shared library): move to Immich on a small always on box, because a growing archive is exactly the case where a per gigabyte subscription compounds against you forever. Photographer shooting RAW every weekend (Tomas, 40 megapixel bodies): Immich, because RAW files eat cloud tiers fast and you already keep a local working copy that you can point the server at. Non technical user with one phone and no home server (Elena, iPhone, no NAS): stay on Google Photos for now, because Immich needs someone to own updates, backups and remote access, and that someone would be you. Privacy sensitive professional handling client images (lawyer, therapist, journalist): Immich on hardware you control, because the legal question is not whether the provider is trustworthy but who can be compelled to hand over the data. Homelab owner already running Docker (Sam, existing NAS and reverse proxy): Immich, because the marginal cost is one compose stack on infrastructure you maintain anyway. Small team or studio sharing a shoot library (five people, one archive): Immich with per user accounts and shared albums, because Google Photos was built for one person and gets awkward the moment several people need write access. The central tradeoff: Google Photos sells you freedom from maintenance and pays for it with a recurring bill and a library you do not control, while Immich hands you control and a o