Recallio vs Tonfotos

Recallio is a self-hosted photo and video backup for phones, available on Android, Linux, web, and self-hosted deployments. After setup, its Android app backs up the phone’s library automatically. Media is stored on hardware the user controls, including a local disk, NAS, or USB drive. The server installer targets an Ubuntu home server and installs FFmpeg and Tailscale; encrypted device access uses Tailscale’s WireGuard mesh. The web library supports search, favorites, albums, grid browsing, lightbox previews, and full-resolution originals. Existing folders on internal or external drives can be added, with subfolders becoming albums. Deleted photos move to a configurable Bin, set to 10 days by default. The maker says there is no telemetry, advertising SDK, or content scanning, and media travels directly between devices. A 2 GB RAM server is stated as sufficient, with storage sized to the library. Nightly release checks and automatic updates run during a chosen window.

Tonfotos organizes photo and video collections, removes duplicates, recognizes people, and helps preserve family histories. Its face recognition groups people and learns from identifications, including faces partly visible or shown at different ages. Users can record relationships and genealogical details, view family ties in a tree, and search an archive by people, events, tags, dates, or shooting locations. Archives can remain on a PC, NAS, or removable drive, with offline use described for disconnected drives or shared folders. TonfotosSync for iOS and Android sends new phone photos to a computer or NAS archive after QR-code pairing. The app can also download photos and videos shared with the user on Telegram. It indexes RAW and HEIC formats and can display HEIC without conversion to JPEG. Other tools include albums, slideshows, photo conversion, and duplicate removal. The free lifetime license has full functionality but limits the number of people in photos. The Personal license costs $59 once and supports unlimited people for one user or device.