Immich vs Ente Photos for a Family Photo Library: Your Own Server or an Encrypted Service

Families leaving Google Photos or iCloud Photos usually want the same things back: automatic backup from every phone, a timeline that loads quickly, search that finds “beach” or “grandma”, shared albums, and no worry about someone else scanning the library. Two open-source projects lead that conversation. Immich is a self-hosted photo server that closely mirrors the Google Photos experience. Ente is an end-to-end encrypted photo service that you can pay for as a hosted product or run on your own server.

They solve the same problem from opposite ends. Immich puts all the intelligence on your server, which therefore can see your photos. Ente encrypts everything on your devices before upload, so the server, whether theirs or yours, cannot see anything. That one design choice explains most of the differences in features, hardware and trust.

Where the intelligence lives

Immich runs on your own hardware with Docker. Phones upload photos and videos to it; the server generates thumbnails, transcodes videos, reads metadata, detects faces and builds a searchable index with machine-learning models, so you can type a description and find matching photos. Because the server processes original files, it can do all of this quickly and centrally, and it can also index existing photo folders on disk as “external libraries”.

Ente encrypts each photo on the device before upload, using keys only your devices hold. The server stores encrypted blobs and metadata it cannot read. Face recognition and semantic search still exist, but they run on your phones and computers, with the results also stored encrypted. Ente’s hosted service sells storage plans, including family plans that share storage; the server is open source and can be self-hosted with S3-compatible storage.

Backing up the family’s phones

Both have Android and iOS apps that back up the camera roll automatically, including videos and, depending on the platform, Live Photos and edited versions. Both let you choose which albums or folders to back up and whether to upload only on Wi-Fi.

Immich’s app is designed to feel like Google Photos: a timeline, memories, a map view and albums. Upload goes directly to your server, so speed depends on your home connection when you are away, and on the server being reachable. A VPN or a carefully configured reverse proxy is needed for backups from outside the house.

Ente’s apps are similarly polished. With the hosted service, backups go to Ente’s infrastructure, so they work anywhere with no home server involved. Because encryption happens on the phone, the first backup of a large library uses noticeably more phone battery and time than a plain upload.

On iPhones, background upload for both depends on iOS allowing the app to run. Opening the app occasionally keeps backups current, which is true of every third-party photo backup app.

Search, faces and memories

Immich’s search is one of its strengths. Server-side models let you search by description (“dog on a sofa”, “snowy mountains”), by recognised people, by place and by date, and results come back quickly even for very large libraries. Face grouping runs automatically as photos arrive. A comparison with another popular self-hosted option is in Immich vs PhotoPrism.

Ente also offers face recognition and descriptive search, but because it runs on devices, indexing a large existing library takes time on each device that does it, typically a desktop or a phone left charging. Once indexed, search works well. The trade-off is deliberate: you get modern search without the server ever seeing your photos.

Privacy and who can see your photos

With Immich, your photos are as private as your server. Nobody else hosts them, which is a big improvement over a commercial cloud. But anyone who gains access to the server, its disks or its backups can see everything. That makes security work part of the job: keep it updated, put it behind a VPN or an authenticating reverse proxy, use strong passwords and two-factor authentication where available, and encrypt off-site backups.

With Ente, privacy does not depend on the server. Even Ente’s own staff cannot see your photos on the hosted service, and if you self-host, a compromised server exposes only encrypted data. The price is that features requiring the server to understand photos must run on devices instead, and that losing your password and recovery key means losing access, with no administrator who can reset it.

Running it at home

Immich is a substantial application. It runs several containers, including the server, machine-learning workers, a database and a cache, and it benefits from a reasonably powerful machine with several gigabytes of RAM, especially while processing a large initial import. Hardware acceleration for video transcoding and machine learning helps on supported Intel, NVIDIA and other hardware. The project releases frequently; read release notes before upgrading, and back up the database as well as the photo files. What tends to break as libraries grow is covered in Immich vs Google Photos.

Ente’s hosted service needs nothing at home. Self-hosting Ente means running its server with a database and S3-compatible object storage, such as MinIO or Garage on your own hardware, or a cloud bucket. Because the heavy work happens on clients, the server itself is light. The self-hosting documentation is good, but fewer people run it this way, so there are fewer community guides than for Immich.

Existing libraries and leaving later

Many families already have years of photos in folders on a NAS. Immich can index those folders in place as external libraries, without copying them, so the files remain in your existing structure. That makes adopting Immich low-risk: if you stop using it, the original folders are untouched.

Ente needs photos uploaded through its apps so they can be encrypted. Leaving Ente means exporting, which its desktop app does in bulk, downloading originals and metadata. Both projects support exports, and both being open source reduces the risk of being stranded.

For either, import from Google Photos via Google Takeout. Takeout splits metadata into separate files; both projects document how to import Takeout archives so dates and locations are preserved.

Backups: a photo app is not a backup

Whichever you choose, the photo app should not be the only copy. With Immich, back up the upload folder and the database to another disk and off-site, encrypted. With hosted Ente, your photos live in Ente’s replicated storage, but an occasional export to your own disk protects against account problems or mistakes. With self-hosted Ente, back up the object storage and database, and remember that the data is only useful with your keys.

Test a restore once. A family photo library is the one dataset nobody forgives you for losing.

Sharing with relatives who will not install anything

The hardest users of any family photo system are the grandparents and cousins who just want to see the pictures. How each system handles them matters more than any feature list.

• Shared links. Both can create a link to an album that opens in a browser with no account. Immich links can carry an expiry date and a password. Ente links can do the same, and the link itself carries the key needed to decrypt the album, so anyone with the full link can view it.
• Accounts for close family. Immich lets you create accounts on your server and share albums or whole libraries between “partners”. Ente’s family plans give each person their own account with shared storage, and albums can be shared between accounts.
• Contributions. Both let invited people add their own photos to a shared album, useful after a wedding or a holiday with several cameras.
• TV viewing. Immich can be shown on TVs through community apps and casting. Ente has apps for some TV platforms and supports casting albums to compatible screens.

For relatives, the simplest path is usually a shared album link per event. Set expiry dates on links you do not want circulating forever, and check what a link exposes before sending it to a large group chat.

Cost over several years

Immich is free software, so the cost is hardware: a server, disks, electricity and backup storage. For a large family library of a few terabytes, that can be cheaper than any subscription over several years, especially if you already run a home server.

Ente’s hosted plans are priced by storage, with family plans sharing one allowance. For a household without a home server, that is often cheaper than buying and maintaining hardware, and it includes off-site replication. Self-hosted Ente costs the same as any self-hosted storage.

Picking for your family

Choose Immich if you already run a home server, want the closest experience to Google Photos with fast server-side search, and have existing photo folders you want indexed in place. Treat the server’s security and backups seriously, because it holds everything in readable form.

Choose Ente if privacy from everyone, including whoever runs the server, matters most, or if you want a polished service without running hardware at home. Its hosted plans are the simplest path, and self-hosting remains an option later.

Both are excellent replacements for big-tech photo clouds. The deciding question is whether you would rather trust your own server or need no trust in any server at all.