SHSelfHostIndex

Lychee vs Thumbor

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted photo management options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
LY Lychee Self-hosted photo management made easy VS TH Thumbor A smart imaging service and enables on-demand cropping, resizing,
FeatureLycheeThumbor
CategoryPhoto ManagementPhoto Management
LicenseMITMIT
LanguagePHPPython
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM512 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metaldocker
GitHub stars★ 4,255★ 10,510
First released20122025
ReplacesGoogle Photos, Flickr—

Why pick each one

Choose Lychee if…

  • Simple and attractive
  • Easy to host
  • Lightweight
Lychee details

Choose Thumbor if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 10.5k GitHub stars
  • Written in Python
Thumbor details

Frequently asked questions

Is Lychee or Thumbor better?

Neither is universally better. Thumbor has the larger community, while Lychee is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Lychee and Thumbor free and open-source?

Yes. Lychee is licensed under MIT and Thumbor under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Lychee and Thumbor with Docker?

Lychee: yes. Thumbor: yes.

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