Ente Photos vs Piwigo

Ente Photos is an end-to-end encrypted photo service for backing up and accessing images across devices. Its apps encrypt photos and metadata on the device before upload, and can back up new photos in the background. On-device AI recognizes faces and photo elements to support natural-language search. Users can revisit curated memories and share encrypted albums or browser links, with password and expiry options for links. Album owners can allow others to contribute photos, including people without an Ente account. Ente documents imports from Google Photos, Apple Photos, Amazon Photos, and local storage; its desktop app supports incremental export. The Free plan includes 10 GB and one replica. Paid plans start with Starter at $2.49 a month, which includes 50 GB. Paid subscribers can share storage with up to five family members, each with a private space. Ente says it stores three encrypted copies across providers and EU locations. It also says it cannot recover an account or data if a user loses both the password and recovery key while logged out of all devices.

Piwigo is open-source photo management software for organizing and sharing photo and video collections. Albums, sub-albums, tags, metadata, and search help structure a library; roles, groups, and permissions let users publish galleries or restrict access. The software can be extended with plugins, themes, settings, and custom code, and both cloud and self-hosted versions provide API access.

Piwigo Cloud is hosted in France on Piwigo’s own infrastructure; the company says customer data is not transferred to the United States. Android and iOS apps support browsing libraries, editing photo details, and uploading photos and videos. Piwigo describes automatic tag and description generation and OCR text extraction, with its AI hosted on its own infrastructure. Users can export photos, videos, and metadata without charge and switch between Cloud and self-hosted deployments. The self-hosted plan is free. Cloud Pro costs €32 a month, billed annually and excluding VAT, and includes 10GB storage, one administrator, unlimited users, and no contributors. Other listed plans vary in storage, formats, contributors, and support. A Cloud subscription is limited to one Piwigo.