Damselfly vs Immich
| Tagline | Fast server-side photo manager with face recognition and powerful EXIF search | High-performance self-hosted photo and video backup, a Google Photos alternative |
| Category | Photo Management | Photo Management |
| Replaces | Google Photos, iCloud Photos | Google Photos, iCloud Photos |
| GitHub stars | 1.8k | 104k |
| Language | Docker | Docker |
| License | GPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Self-host difficulty | 3/5 Moderate | 3/5 Moderate |
| Deploy options | Docker Docker Compose Manual | Docker Docker Compose |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | 2 days ago | today |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
Damselfly
- Face recognition quality lags behind Google Photos' ML-backed clustering
- No mobile companion app for automatic camera-roll upload
- Video management and playback support is minimal
- No sharing links or collaborative album features comparable to Google Photos shared albums
Immich
- Requires multi-container Docker Compose setup with GPU/CPU for ML; more resource-intensive than cloud alternatives
- Project is still pre-1.0 and explicitly warns against using as the sole backup solution
- No built-in CDN or geo-redundant storage; relies on local disk or manually configured object storage
- Collaborative shared albums lack the polish and third-party integrations of Google Photos
Bottom line
Both are a similar lift to self-host; choose Immich for the larger community and ecosystem. Immich has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.