Ente vs Piwigo
| Tagline | End-to-end encrypted self-hosted photo backup with native mobile apps | Community-driven PHP photo gallery software with extensive plugin ecosystem |
| Category | Photo Management | Photo Management |
| Replaces | Google Photos, iCloud Photos | Google Photos, iCloud Photos |
| GitHub stars | 27k | 3.8k |
| Language | Docker | PHP |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Self-host difficulty | 3/5 Moderate | 4/5 Involved |
| Deploy options | Docker Docker Compose | Manual Docker |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | today | yesterday |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
Ente
- No AI-based automatic photo tagging, scene recognition, or search by content due to E2E encryption
- Self-hosted setup requires configuring S3-compatible object storage separately
- Smaller ecosystem of third-party integrations compared to Google Photos
- Collaborative album features are less mature than Google Photos shared libraries
Piwigo
- UI feels dated compared to modern photo management apps like Google Photos or Immich
- No native mobile app for automatic backup; mobile sync requires third-party plugins
- AI-powered features like face recognition and object tagging require third-party plugins with variable quality
- Initial setup requires manual PHP/MySQL web server configuration without Docker Compose
Bottom line
Choose Ente if you want the lower-effort setup; choose Ente for the larger community and ecosystem. Ente has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.
Piwigo
Community-driven PHP photo gallery software with extensive plugin ecosystem