FamilyAlbum vs Noodle Gallery

FamilyAlbum is a private service for sharing family photos and videos, designed to help parents share children’s moments with loved ones. Uploads are arranged automatically into albums by month. Only family members invited by the user can view an album; they can comment, respond to reactions and communicate there, while album owners can check whether relatives viewed photos. The free plan includes unlimited photo and video storage and 11 free prints per family member each month. Users can follow suggested ideas for monthly photobooks or create their own. FamilyAlbum is available on Android, iOS and the web, with no desktop app listed. Paid plans begin at $2.99 a month: Premium One costs $2.99 a month, Premium Family is $5.99 a month or 59 USD per year, and Premium Family Pro is $10.99 a month or 109 USD per year. Premium plans add features such as computer uploads, longer or higher-quality video uploads, bulk downloads, search and TV casting. FamilyAlbum says transfers are encrypted and that it does not sell user data to third parties.

Noodle Gallery is a self-hosted photo and video app for storing and organizing media on a server you provide. Its Shared Spaces let several people contribute to one chronological timeline while keeping their personal libraries separate. A Cmd/Ctrl+K palette searches photos, people, places, tags, albums, Spaces, commands, and settings. The server supports S3-compatible storage, including AWS S3, MinIO, Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, and Wasabi. A browser import wizard reads Google Takeout archives while retaining dates, GPS coordinates, descriptions, favorites, and album structure. Native iOS and Android apps include background camera backup, CLIP search, a map, and Shared Spaces. The developers say media, metadata, face-recognition data, and accounts stay on the user’s server, which they cannot access. Noodle Gallery is open source under AGPL-3.0, and each instance provides REST API documentation and Swagger UI at /doc. The free self-hosted plan has no subscription or storage cap, but runs on user-provided hardware.