Coppermine vs thumbsup
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted photo management options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Coppermine | thumbsup |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 57 · Fair | 56 · Fair |
| Category | Photo Management | Photo Management |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Language | PHP | JavaScript |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 256 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal | bare-metal, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 73 | ★ 865 |
| First released | 2002 | 2016 |
| Replaces | Flickr | Google Photos, Flickr |
What are Coppermine and thumbsup?
Coppermine
Coppermine is a multi-purpose, fully featured web picture gallery that supports user uploads, ratings, and comments. It is one of the longest-running open-source gallery scripts and runs on a standard PHP and MySQL stack.
- User uploads and ratings
- Comments and moderation
- Theming support
- Batch import
thumbsup
thumbsup is a tool that builds a static HTML gallery from your photos and videos, requiring no server-side runtime. The generated site can be hosted anywhere and includes thumbnails, albums, and metadata.
- Static gallery generation
- No server runtime needed
- Thumbnails and albums
- Host anywhere
Coppermine vs thumbsup: key differences
Coppermine is written in PHP, while thumbsup is built with JavaScript. Licensing differs — GPL-3.0 for Coppermine versus MIT for thumbsup. Coppermine is the more established project (first released 2002), while thumbsup arrived in 2016. Thumbsup has the considerably larger community, at 865 GitHub stars versus 73.
Why pick each one
Choose Coppermine if…
- Very mature
- Community moderation tools
Watch out for
- Dated interface
- Aging codebase
Choose thumbsup if…
- Extremely portable output
- No database
Watch out for
- No live uploads
- Regenerate to update
Frequently asked questions
Is Coppermine or thumbsup better?
thumbsup is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Coppermine if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Coppermine and thumbsup free and open-source?
Yes. Coppermine is licensed under GPL-3.0 and thumbsup under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Coppermine and thumbsup with Docker?
Coppermine: check the project docs for container support. thumbsup: check the project docs for container support.