iCloud Alternatives for Photos: 3 Ways to Keep Originals

If your iCloud Photos library has outgrown 5 GB, three realistic places to move it are Google Photos, Ente Photos and a self-hosted Immich server. Google Photos is the only one that Apple's own page lists as a direct transfer target. Ente is a hosted, end-to-end encrypted service that reads your iPhone library. Immich costs nothing but runs on your server and your backups. For the broader file-storage picture, see all iCloud alternatives.

What matters for photos

1. Originals. Does the service keep full resolution, or recompress to save space?
2. Getting the library over. Phone auto-upload is easy. Your existing years of photos are the hard part.
3. Free tier and first paid step.
4. Who holds the data. Hosted, encrypted, or on your own hardware.
5. Upkeep. A server needs updates and backups.

Apple's iCloud page lists 5 GB free and paid plans of 50 GB at $0.99, 200 GB at $2.99 and 2 TB at $9.99 a month. Staying is cheap, so the reason to leave is usually control or a mixed set of devices.

Get your photos out first

Apple's download page lets you select up to 1,000 items at a time on iCloud.com and choose Unmodified Originals, Highest Resolution or Most Compatible. On a Mac, Photos has a Download Originals to this Mac setting for the whole library. On iPhone you can choose Export Unmodified Originals. If your Mac library is set to Optimize Mac Storage, you hold lower-resolution copies, so switch before exporting.

Google Photos

Google Photos is a hosted photo service from Google, and the one with a built-in route from Apple. According to Apple's transfer page, you sign in at privacy.apple.com, request a copy of your iCloud Photos, and sign in to Google. Most transfers take 3 to 7 days, some up to 30, and nothing is removed from iCloud.

The transfer is lossy. Apple says Smart Albums, Live Photos and some RAW files may not transfer, shared albums and some metadata are skipped, and only the most recent edit of each photo is sent. Advanced Data Protection must be off, and you need enough Google storage for the copy.

Google One's plans page lists 15 GB free, 100 GB at $1.99 a month and 2 TB at $9.99 (sold as Google AI Plus). Google's storage help says the 15 GB is shared among Drive, Gmail and Photos, and the Photos help page says Storage saver resizes photos over 16 MP and videos over 1080p, so choose Original quality to keep full resolution.

Who should not pick it: anyone who needs Live Photos or Smart Albums to arrive intact, or who wants encryption the provider cannot read.

Ente Photos

Ente Photos is an open-source photo service built around end-to-end encryption. According to its pricing page, the free plan is 10 GB, and paid plans run Starter 50 GB at $2.49 a month, Popular 200 GB at $4.99, Pro 1 TB at $9.99 and Pro+ 2 TB at $19.99. The page describes the service as end-to-end encrypted.

Ente's Apple Photos guide says the iPhone app reads your iCloud library directly and backs up originals with their metadata. For a large first backup it suggests Backup mode, which keeps the screen awake while the app stays open. On a Mac, you can export with Export Unmodified Original and import the files into Ente's desktop or web app.

Know what an export loses. The guide says favorites, album membership and People tags live only in Apple Photos and are not embedded in exported files. Shared-album copies are downscaled to 2,048 pixels and lose location and original dates.

Who should not pick it: someone who wants a free service with more than 10 GB, or an official one-click transfer from Apple.

Immich

Immich is a self-hosted photo and video manager with a web app and mobile apps. According to its introduction, it is open source under the GNU AGPL v3, the apps are available from the App Store and Google Play, and you choose which albums to back up. It costs nothing to license. You pay for the machine and the disks.

The requirements page recommends 64-bit Linux, lists 6 GB RAM minimum and 8 GB recommended, and requires Docker with the Compose plugin. Windows and macOS work through Docker Desktop, but the docs strongly discourage non-Linux setups and give them less support. The database should sit on local SSD storage and never on a network share. The same docs warn that the database holds only metadata, so you must set up manual backups of the images and videos.

Real-world friction shows up when your phone library lives in iCloud. In an August 2025 GitHub issue on slow iOS backup, later closed in January 2026, a maintainer said iOS works through the upload queue slowly when the app is in the background, and that with assets in iCloud the app must pull them down and hash them before upload. A separate July 2025 issue reported the beta app listing about 9,000 assets to upload again after a completed backup; it has since been closed as fixed, so the problem may no longer apply.

Who should not pick it: anyone who will not maintain and back up a server. If the disk fails, your photos are gone.

Comparison

How to choose

You want it done this week. Use Apple's transfer to Google Photos, then check albums and Live Photos. Keep your iCloud copy until you have compared counts.

You care about privacy and don't want a server. Try Ente's free 10 GB on a small album first, and check its iPhone import against your largest album before committing. Our free photo storage page lists more hosted free tiers.

You are comfortable with Docker and backups. Immich is the free route. A July 2024 Hacker News thread asking for the best way to leave iCloud Photos got a single reply recommending it, so treat that as a pointer, not a review. See free photo backup for backup tools that pair with it.