Replace Google Photos with Immich: The Complete Migration Guide

You’ve got 15GB free on Google Photos. You hit that limit two years ago. Now you’re paying $2.99/month for 100GB — or $9.99 for 2TB — and every photo you upload trains Google’s AI models. Your kid’s first steps. Your vacation memories. Your private moments. All feeding the machine.

There’s a better way.

Immich is a self-hosted Google Photos replacement that’s fast, beautiful, and completely under your control. It has mobile apps, automatic backup, AI-powered search, face recognition, and a timeline view that feels just like Google Photos — minus the surveillance.

This guide walks you through why you should leave, what you’ll gain (and lose), and exactly how to migrate.

Why Leave Google Photos?

The Cost Problem

Google’s free 15GB sounds generous until you realize it’s shared across Gmail, Drive, and Photos. A family that takes photos regularly burns through that in months. Then the upsell kicks in:

Google One Plan	Storage	Monthly Cost	Annual Cost
Free	15GB (shared)	$0	$0
Basic	100GB	$2.99	$35.88
Standard	200GB	$4.99	$59.88
Premium	2TB	$9.99	$119.88

A 2TB VPS from Hostinger costs around $10-15/month — and you get a full server, not just photo storage. Run Immich, a password manager, your own cloud storage, and a dozen other apps on the same box.

The Privacy Problem

Google Photos uses your images to:

• Train AI models — object recognition, scene understanding, and generative AI all learn from your photos
• Build advertising profiles — Google knows where you go, who you’re with, and what you do
• Feed into Google Lens — your photos improve Google’s visual search for everyone
• Cross-reference location data — tied to your Google Maps timeline and search history

You agreed to this in the Terms of Service. But “agreeing” and “being comfortable with it” are different things.

The Control Problem

• Google can change terms anytime — they killed unlimited storage in 2021 with six months’ notice
• They can lock your account — automated systems flag accounts with no human review, and suddenly you lose everything
• Export is painful — Google Takeout gives you a mess of files with sidecar JSONs instead of clean, organized folders
• Quality degradation — “Storage saver” mode compresses your photos, and you can’t get the originals back

Meet Immich

Immich is an open-source, self-hosted photo and video management platform. Think Google Photos, but running on your own server. It’s built with a mobile-first approach and is under extremely active development.

Feature Comparison

Feature	Google Photos	Immich
Automatic phone backup	✅	✅ iOS + Android apps
AI-powered search	✅	✅ CLIP-based search
Face recognition	✅	✅ Built-in
Timeline view	✅	✅
Shared albums	✅	✅
Map view	✅	✅
Memories (“On this day”)	✅	✅
Partner sharing	✅	✅
Video playback	✅	✅ With transcoding
Offline access	✅ (limited)	✅ Via mobile apps
Google Assistant integration	✅	❌
Chromecast support	✅	❌
Storage limit	Plan-based	Your disk space
Monthly cost	$0-$9.99	$0 (self-hosted)
Data ownership	Google’s servers	Your server
Privacy	You are the product	Full control

What You Gain

• Unlimited storage — add more disk space whenever you want, at VPS prices (not Google markup)
• Original quality always — no compression, no “storage saver,” full-resolution originals
• Real privacy — photos never leave your server unless you share them
• No account lockout risk — you control the server, no automated ban can lock you out
• Portable data — files stored in plain folders on disk, easy to back up or migrate
• Family accounts — create accounts for family members at no extra cost
• API access — automate anything with Immich’s REST API

What You Lose

Let’s be honest about the trade-offs:

• Zero maintenance — Google handles everything. With Immich, you handle updates and backups
• Google ecosystem integration — no Google Assistant voice search, no Chromecast casting
• Google’s AI quality — Google’s search and face recognition is world-class. Immich is great but not Google-level
• Seamless sharing — sharing a Google Photos link is universal. Immich sharing requires your server to be online
• Automatic categorization — Google auto-creates albums like “Animals” or “Food.” Immich focuses on faces and places
• Reliability guarantees — Google has 99.99% uptime. Your VPS depends on your provider and config

For most people, the privacy and cost benefits outweigh these gaps. And Immich is closing the feature gap fast.

What You Need

To run Immich, you need a VPS with enough power for the machine learning features. Here’s the breakdown:

Library Size	Recommended VPS	Storage
< 10,000 photos	2 vCPU, 4GB RAM	50GB SSD
10,000-50,000	4 vCPU, 8GB RAM	200GB NVMe
50,000-200,000	4 vCPU, 16GB RAM	500GB+ NVMe
200,000+	8 vCPU, 32GB RAM	1TB+ NVMe

Recommended VPS Providers

Our top pick for Immich: Hostinger VPS — starts at $5.99/month with 4 vCPU, 8GB RAM, and 100GB NVMe. Enough for most personal libraries with room to grow.

Other solid options:

• Hetzner — best value in Europe, CX31 (4 vCPU, 8GB) for ~€8.50/month
• Contabo — huge storage allocations, great for large photo libraries

For a detailed comparison, see our Best VPS for Immich guide.

Migration Guide: Google Photos to Immich

Step 1: Export from Google Photos

Use Google Takeout to export your library:

1. Go to takeout.google.com
2. Click Deselect all, then scroll down and select only Google Photos
3. Click Next step
4. Choose Export once, file type .zip, and max file size 10GB
5. Click Create export
6. Wait for the email (can take hours or days for large libraries)
7. Download all the zip files

Important: Google Takeout exports photos with separate .json sidecar files containing metadata (dates, locations, descriptions). You’ll need to merge these back. Immich handles this automatically during import.

Step 2: Set Up Immich on Your VPS

SSH into your VPS and install Immich via Docker:

# Install Docker (if not already installed)
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com | sh

# Create Immich directory
mkdir -p /opt/immich && cd /opt/immich

# Download the docker-compose file and env
wget -O docker-compose.yml https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/docker-compose.yml
wget -O .env https://github.com/immich-app/immich/releases/latest/download/example.env

# Edit the .env file
nano .env

In the .env file, set:

# Change the upload location to wherever you want photos stored
UPLOAD_LOCATION=/opt/immich/library

# Set a secure database password
DB_PASSWORD=your_secure_password_here

# Set the Immich version (or use 'release' for latest)
IMMICH_VERSION=release

Start Immich:

docker compose up -d

Immich is now running on port 2283. Set up a reverse proxy (Caddy or Traefik) for HTTPS access.

Step 3: Set Up a Reverse Proxy

Using Caddy (the simplest option):

# Install Caddy
sudo apt install -y caddy

# Configure
sudo tee /etc/caddy/Caddyfile > /dev/null <<EOF
photos.yourdomain.com {
    reverse_proxy localhost:2283
}
EOF

# Restart Caddy
sudo systemctl restart caddy

Caddy automatically handles SSL certificates. Your Immich instance is now available at https://photos.yourdomain.com.

Step 4: Import Your Google Takeout

Immich has built-in Google Takeout support via the CLI tool:

# Install the Immich CLI
npm i -g @immich/cli

# Authenticate
immich login https://photos.yourdomain.com/api YOUR_API_KEY

# Upload your Google Takeout export
# The CLI automatically handles Google's JSON sidecar metadata files
immich upload --recursive /path/to/takeout/Google\ Photos/

The CLI will:

• Upload all photos and videos
• Read the .json sidecar files to restore dates, locations, and descriptions
• Skip duplicates if you run it multiple times
• Show progress as it goes

For a 50,000 photo library, expect the initial upload to take several hours. The ML processing (face recognition, search indexing) will run in the background afterward.

Step 5: Set Up Mobile Apps

1. Download the Immich app (iOS / Android)
2. Enter your server URL: https://photos.yourdomain.com
3. Log in with your Immich account
4. Enable automatic backup in the app settings
5. Select which folders to back up (Camera, Screenshots, etc.)

Your phone will now automatically back up photos to your server — just like Google Photos did.

Step 6: Disable Google Photos Backup

Once you’ve verified everything is imported and working:

1. Open the Google Photos app
2. Go to Settings → Backup
3. Turn off Backup
4. Optionally, go to Google One storage and downgrade your plan

Don’t delete your Google Photos library immediately. Keep it as a secondary backup for a few months until you trust your self-hosted setup.

Backup Strategy

You’re now responsible for your own photos. Take this seriously:

• VPS snapshots — most providers offer automated snapshots ($1-2/month extra)
• Offsite backup — use rclone to sync your library to a second location (another VPS, B2, or even back to Google Drive — encrypted)
• 3-2-1 rule — 3 copies, 2 different media, 1 offsite

# Example: sync Immich library to Backblaze B2 daily
rclone sync /opt/immich/library b2:my-photo-backup --progress

Verdict

Google Photos is convenient. Immich is better.

You get the same core experience — automatic phone backup, AI search, face recognition, a beautiful timeline — without paying Google a subscription or letting them train AI on your family photos.

The migration takes an afternoon. The VPS costs roughly the same as a Google One plan. And you end up with full control over your most personal data.

Your photos deserve better than being ad-targeting fuel.

Ready to make the switch? Grab a VPS from Hostinger, follow the steps above, and you’ll be running your own photo cloud by tonight.

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FAQ

Is Immich stable enough for daily use?

Yes. Immich has been in active development since 2022 and has a large, active community. The mobile apps are solid, and the web interface is polished. It’s still technically pre-1.0, but thousands of people use it as their primary photo solution.

Can multiple family members use the same Immich instance?

Absolutely. Create separate accounts for each family member. Each person gets their own library, and you can use the partner sharing feature to share libraries between accounts. The Immich admin controls storage quotas and user permissions.

How much does it actually cost compared to Google Photos?

A Hostinger VPS with 4 vCPU, 8GB RAM, and 100GB storage runs about $5.99/month — roughly what Google charges for 100GB on Google One. But you get a full server. Add more storage as needed, and run other apps alongside Immich. For large libraries (1TB+), VPS storage is dramatically cheaper than Google One’s $9.99/month for 2TB.

What if my VPS goes down?

Your mobile apps cache recent photos locally, so you won’t lose access entirely. But yes, if your server is down, you can’t access your full library remotely. Choose a reliable VPS provider, set up monitoring with Uptime Kuma, and keep offsite backups. Most quality VPS providers deliver 99.9%+ uptime.

Can I still use Google Photos alongside Immich?

Yes. Some people run both during a transition period — Immich as primary, Google Photos as a secondary backup with the free 15GB tier. You can also disable Google’s “storage saver” compression and just let it fill up as a redundant backup.