Piwigo
A web gallery for sharing and organising a large photo collection.
Instead of Flickr, Google Photos albums
Screenshot from piwigo.org, taken 2026-10-30, shown to help you recognise the tool. It belongs to its maker. Ask us to remove it.
Piwigo has been around since the early 2000s, and it shows in a good way: a photo gallery you run yourself, with tags, albums, permissions and plugins, kept up by a community. It suits people sharing photos with family or clients, and it is free to self-host with paid hosting if you would rather not.
Piwigo scores a 5 on longevity, a 4 on lock-in, self-direction and power and a 3 on footprint and delivery.
It looks like a classic gallery and not a phone-first backup tool, so Delivery is a 3.
- A gallery you run yourself, with albums and permissions
- Maintained by a community since the early 2000s
- Built more for sharing than for phone backup
What stands out
Do you make Piwigo? Get the badge for your site
This badge reports a dated review. It is not a certification and it costs nothing. Link it to this page and leave the numbers alone: the image always shows the current score.
For dark backgrounds, use piwigo-dark.svg in place of piwigo-light.svg.
For comparison, we also reviewed Google Photos (16/30) as a benchmark.
Other tools for “keep my photos private”
digiKamA desktop photo manager that keeps your library on your own disk.
Ente PhotosEnd-to-end encrypted photo backup and sharing.
ImmichA self-hosted photo and video library that backs up your phone to a server you run.
PhotoPrismA photo library you host, with search that sorts pictures by place and subject.