Flickr vs Stingle Photos

Flickr is an online photography community for managing, sharing, and discovering photos. Users can store and organize images, make galleries, and explore galleries from photographers they follow. Groups, contests, and a photography blog provide community activities, while daily curation and Creative Commons images support discovery. Privacy settings let users choose default visibility and control who can view, download, or interact with individual photos and videos. The mobile app can upload camera-roll photos and videos automatically, keeping them private until the user chooses to share them. Image recognition can find visually similar images and assist with search and organization. Users may authorize third-party apps to work with their accounts and later revoke access in settings. Flickr offers an API for non-commercial use; commercial use requires prior arrangement. The free plan permits 1,000 public photo and video uploads and displays ads. Flickr Pro costs $8 a month, billed annually, and includes unlimited full-resolution sharing and backup, ad-free browsing, detailed statistics, and enhanced privacy settings.

Stingle Photos is a gallery and camera app for backing up and syncing photos and videos across devices using the same account. It backs up files in the background and supports video recording and playback. Files are encrypted locally before they are sent to cloud storage. Stingle names XChaCha20 with Poly1305 for file data, X25519 for public-key cryptography and Argon2 for key derivation; it says sensitive photo and video metadata is encrypted in the file header. Albums can be shared with other Stingle users using encrypted album keys. The product is open source under GPLv3, and listed platforms include Android, iOS, Linux, macOS, Windows, API access and self-hosting. The free plan includes 1 GB. Paid storage starts at $2.99 a month for 100 GB; other listed plans include monthly and yearly capacities up to multiple terabytes. Users can host their own API server, with Linux, S3-compatible storage, a domain name and Git among the prerequisites. The hosted service uses DigitalOcean and Wasabi hot cloud storage. The provider cannot recover or change a forgotten password, so users should save the recovery phrase. The maker’s August 2026 post says the iOS app is available on the App Store and includes a built-in camera; a web version is planned.