Immich vs Syncthing
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted apps from related categories
— licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one
replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Compare Immich with
choose an app… LocalSend MinIO Jellyfin copyparty Puter PhotoPrism croc qBittorrent Spacedrive Nextcloud File Browser SeaweedFS SRS Cloudreve Ente Photos DeepFace Magic Wormhole Navidrome Kodi gallery-dl Koel Jackett Beets PeerTube Transmission Sonarr MeTube Color Thief darktable Thumbor LibrePhotos Photoview imaginary Google Photos Takeout Helper Syncthing Android Wrapper Lychee Piwigo Memories Hydrus Network Danbooru OwnPhotos Images.weserv.nl ExifCleaner PiGallery2 Photonix ChronoFrame Damselfly Immich Kiosk exifr digiKam HomeGallery Chevereto PictShare Sigal thumbsup nanogallery2 Nextcloud Photos Damselfly Web Photofield Shotwell Server Zenphoto Lutim fgallery SPIS Memtly Mejiro This week in past Coppermine Tonido Photos MyPhotoShare Mediagoblin PhotoStructure Reservo Single File PHP Gallery
Compare Syncthing with
choose an app… LocalSend MinIO Rclone copyparty Puter PhotoPrism croc Spacedrive Nextcloud File Browser Restic SeaweedFS Cloudreve Ente Photos DeepFace Magic Wormhole Snapdrop gallery-dl Kubo (IPFS) Ceph transfer.sh ProjectSend alt: Vert.sh File converter Seafile Duplicati Filestash Stalwart Kopia Color Thief BorgBackup darktable SFTPGo PairDrop ShareDrop Dufs Thumbor qrcp Nextcloud All-in-One Velero FilePizza OctoPrint ownCloud LibrePhotos CryptPad miniserve FileBrowser Quantum bup Conduit File Sync Backrest Resilio Sync alternative Onionshare wger Photoview closet GoToSocial NoNo upspin imaginary h5ai Tiny File Manager Send Google Photos Takeout Helper OpenCloud WebDAV Server Go Duplicacy Unison Flying Carpet Papra CKAN SparkleShare elFinder Pingvin Share gocryptfs Kinto pgBackRest Syncthing Android Wrapper bitmagnet Nextcloud Desktop Sync slskd Updog Zipline FileGator PicoShare RcloneView Syncthing Tray gohttpserver Gokapi LubeLogger Chibisafe Mazanoke Syncthing-Fork Directory Lister Peergos Palmr Reitti CryFS Pydio Cells Mainsail OpenCloud Files Enclosed git-annex ProjectSend Zenko CloudServer bittorrent-tracker Apaxy PsiTransfer Plik Firefox SyncStorage Nextcloud companion go-filecoin none WebDAV-Aria Syncany Sync-in HortusFox FreeFileSync Garage Linx Slink Sharry rmfakecloud Morphos server Picsur rsync.net alternative Stash NoDuplicate HomeHub Uguu rustypaste XBackBone Zen scanservjs Gossa Threema Web FileRise Pomf Readur Poznote Webtor QuickShare ownCloud Web DumbDrop Wingfit Local Content Share Cryptomator CLI 015 IFM mikochi Open Web Calendar ThinkDashboard Davros goploader Lufi Files Sharing Filebin Kleeja Z-Push PrivyDrop Flare Nephele File Drop Cryptomator Hub hash-calendar ZeroNote Pydio Cells Sync Shifter Passky Client Pydio Cells Client elixire Dropgate Server IPFS Podcasting Digirecord Feber FileRun GoSƐ Jirafeau LibreOffice pacebin Resilio Sync ResourceSpace Samba slcl Surfer Yetishare
Feature Immich Syncthing Category Photo Management File Sync & Storage License AGPL-3.0 MPL-2.0 Language TypeScript Go Setup difficulty Medium Easy Min. RAM 2,048 MB 128 MB Deployment docker docker, binary, bare-metal GitHub stars ★ 109,945 ★ 87,439 First released 2022 2014 Replaces Google Photos, iCloud Photos Dropbox, Resilio Sync
Why pick each one
Choose Immich if… Excellent mobile apps Fast and feature-rich Very active development Immich details Choose Syncthing if… No central server needed Very private by design Lightweight and reliable Syncthing details
Frequently asked questions Is Immich or Syncthing better? Neither is universally better. Immich has the larger community, while Syncthing is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Immich and Syncthing free and open-source? Yes. Immich is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Syncthing under MPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Immich and Syncthing with Docker? Immich: yes. Syncthing: yes.