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Comparison · Collab
PhotoPrism vs Immich
A side-by-side editorial comparison of PhotoPrism and Immich — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Shared themes:self-hosted
PhotoPrism vs Immich: at a glance
What is PhotoPrism?
PhotoPrism swapped in an ONNX vision pipeline, then opened the library to 360° media at 16K.
Two substantial releases in ten weeks moved the product on both axes it cares about. May replaced the legacy Pigo face detector entirely with an ONNX-based pipeline, made vision.yml accept model identifiers from Hugging Face, Ollama and OpenAI-compatible catalogs, and modernised media handling with Vulkan transcoding, a native HEIC/AVIF reader and layered TIFF and PSD support. July added interactive equirectangular 360° photos and video, raised the thumbnail and video ceiling to 16K, and put an inline multi-page PDF viewer in the app.
What is Immich?
Immich is four release candidates into v3 with every feature note published somewhere else.
The visible release stream is a v3.0.0 RC series — rc.0 through rc.3, cut over eleven days in June — and each entry is the same template: a release-candidate disclaimer, a database and library backup warning, and instructions to move IMMICH_VERSION from v2 to v3 or the rolling v3-rc tag. The actual release notes live on a work-in-progress preview page outside the changelog.
PhotoPrism vs Immich: editorial side-by-side
PhotoPrism
3.8COLLAB
PhotoPrism swapped in an ONNX vision pipeline, then opened the library to 360° media at 16K.
◆ Current state
Two substantial releases in ten weeks moved the product on both axes it cares about. May replaced the legacy Pigo face detector entirely with an ONNX-based pipeline, made vision.yml accept model identifiers from Hugging Face, Ollama and OpenAI-compatible catalogs, and modernised media handling with Vulkan transcoding, a native HEIC/AVIF reader and layered TIFF and PSD support. July added interactive equirectangular 360° photos and video, raised the thumbnail and video ceiling to 16K, and put an inline multi-page PDF viewer in the app.
◆ Where it's heading
The AI work has moved from bundled TensorFlow models to a pluggable pipeline where the model catalog is configuration, not a build artifact — Ollama, OpenAI and Hugging Face identifiers all resolve through the same file. In parallel the media layer keeps absorbing formats other libraries push out to external tools: PSD, layered TIFF, PDF, and now 360°. PhotoPrism is positioning as the thing you point at a mixed archive, not just a photo folder.
◆ Prediction
Expect the format expansion to continue and the vision configuration to keep broadening its provider surface, with the accessibility section added in July likely to grow into a fuller pass.
Immich
0.0COLLAB
Immich is four release candidates into v3 with every feature note published somewhere else.
◆ Current state
The visible release stream is a v3.0.0 RC series — rc.0 through rc.3, cut over eleven days in June — and each entry is the same template: a release-candidate disclaimer, a database and library backup warning, and instructions to move IMMICH_VERSION from v2 to v3 or the rolling v3-rc tag. The actual release notes live on a work-in-progress preview page outside the changelog.
◆ Where it's heading
What the feed does show is a project running a disciplined pre-release: a rolling RC tag so testers do not have to chase point versions, and two-to-seven day turnarounds between candidates as bugs come in. What it does not show is a single feature, which means anyone tracking Immich through its changelog learns only that a major version is close, not what it changes.
◆ Prediction
A v3.0.0 stable release follows once the RC turnaround lengthens; the entries give no basis for predicting what it contains, because none of them describe it.
Alternatives to PhotoPrism and Immich
Other Collab products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either PhotoPrism or Immich.
Jellyfin
Jellyfin drops the 10. prefix and puts 12.0 through a three-candidate preview.
EGroupware
Two branches, one deadline: 23.1 security coverage ends August 15th and 26.x is the only exit.
SOGo
SOGo's 5.12 line has become a CVE conveyor belt while the team's attention sits on SOGo 6.
File Browser
File Browser is shutting down — the repo archives on 2026-09-01 and no security fixes follow.
Paperless-ngx
Paperless-ngx shipped its 3.0 rewrite, then spent a week putting out the fires.
See all PhotoPrism alternatives → · See all Immich alternatives →
Recent activity from PhotoPrism and Immich
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 5d agoPhotoPrism360° media, 16K thumbnails and an inline PDF viewer ⚡
- 1mo agoImmichThird v3 candidate fixes issues found in rc.2
- 1mo agoImmichSecond v3 candidate fixes issues found in rc.1
- 1mo agoImmichRolling v3-rc tag introduced for prereleases
- 1mo agoImmichFirst v3 release candidate opens the major-version cut
- 2mo agoPhotoPrismDisk-space threshold halts indexing before volumes fill
- 2mo agoPhotoPrismONNX pipeline replaces Pigo; vision models become configuration ⚡
- 4mo agoPhotoPrismOllama configuration via env vars, broad reliability fixes
- 8mo agoPhotoPrismBatch Edit dialog, Ollama and OpenAI caption generation
- 1y agoPhotoPrismOllama models in Vision AI and an Adjust Location dialog
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between PhotoPrism and Immich?
Both compete on the same themes — self-hosted — within Collab. PhotoPrism is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 3.8 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is PhotoPrism better than Immich?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. PhotoPrism is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 3.8 vs 0.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Collab products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to PhotoPrism?
Top PhotoPrism alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "PhotoPrism alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/photoprism for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Immich?
Top Immich alternatives in Collab are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Immich alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/immich for the full list with editorial commentary on each.