Noodle Gallery vs Permafiles

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.

Permafiles is managed cloud storage built on the open-source Nextcloud platform, for files, photos, and folders. Users can share family photos and set permissions controlling who may access, edit, or download them. Shared links can also have passwords and expiration dates. Nextcloud Office supports online editing of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, while Nextcloud Talk provides calls with up to 10 people. The Nextcloud Mail app can connect to Gmail and other email services through IMAP and SMTP. Sync clients are listed for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS, with web access as well. Security measures described include HTTPS/TLS, two-factor authentication, brute-force and antivirus protection, and optional end-to-end encryption for supported folders and use cases. Permafiles says its server infrastructure is hosted in Germany, while customer file data is stored with third-party S3-compatible storage in the United Kingdom. It also says it makes daily offsite backups and can restore a complete server failure within a couple of hours. The free plan includes 5 GB. Paid plans range from £1.99 per month for 64 GB to £27.99 per month for 3 TB.