Photo libraries
What it costs to self-host PhotoPrism
AI-Powered Photos App 🌈💎✨ Below is the server it needs at each team size, what that costs, and how long the 1 commercial product it replaces would take to cost more.
| Team size | Memory | Disk | Cheapest plan that fits | Server | With backups and your time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| solo | 2.5 GB | 80 GB | Starter 4 GB · VPSServer | $22.00 | $139 |
| 5 people | 2.6 GB | 320 GB | Starter 4 GB · VPSServer | $46.00 | $168 |
| 10 people | 2.7 GB | 620 GB | Pro · Kamatera | $69.00 | $195 |
| 25 people | 3.0 GB | 1.5 TB | Pro · Kamatera | $114 | $249 |
| 50 people | 3.4 GB | 2.9 TB | Pro · Kamatera | $189 | $339 |
| 100 people | 4.3 GB | 5.9 TB | Starter 8 GB · VPSServer | $626 | $864 |
| 250 people | 7.1 GB | 14.7 TB | Starter 8 GB · VPSServer | $1,526 | $1,944 |
The sizing model for PhotoPrism
Go with MariaDB and on-device classification. Lighter than Immich but its multi-user story is weaker.
- 2 GB of memory for the whole stack at rest, every container the project ships included.
- 15 MB more per active user, then 25% on top so the box is not running at its ceiling.
- 20 GB of disk to begin with, growing 60 GB per user.
- 2 vCPU. Carried through from the project's baseline and not scaled with team size, because for this workload memory is what runs out first.
These base figures come from the project's own documented requirements. The per-user increments are ours in every case. They are deliberately generous rather than optimistic: a comparison that undersizes the server flatters self-hosting.
Time, not just money
PhotoPrism is rated medium to operate, which in this model means about 6 hours to get it running properly the first time and 1.5 hours a month after that. At $75 an hour that is $450 once and $112 a month, which is usually the largest line in the whole calculation.
What it replaces
| Commercial product | Its cost at 10 people | PhotoPrism at 10 people | Break-even | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google One storage Google AI Plus (2 TB) | $11.58 | $195 | never | full breakdown |
Where to put PhotoPrism
2.7 GB of memory and 620 GB of disk is what this needs at 10 people. The cheapest plan that fits, among the providers whose prices we have read ourselves, is the Pro plus a 600 GB volume at Kamatera for $69.00 a month.
We are not claiming this is the cheapest server on the internet. It is the cheapest one we can honestly quote. Hetzner Cloud, Vultr and PikaPods publish prices we could not read programmatically, and Hetzner in particular is usually cheaper per gigabyte of memory than anything quoted above. Price them yourself before you commit.
The Kamatera link above is an affiliate link: if you open a paying account through it, Kamatera pays us a one-time commission of $75 (in most countries). That never changes the computed costs, which server is chosen, or the conclusion of this page. The sizing model and every price source are published in full.
Project facts
| Licence | Other not a standard open-source licence |
|---|---|
| Written in | Go |
| GitHub stars | 40,183 |
| Open issues | 470 |
| Latest release | 260728-bbde8f452 |
| Last commit | 2026-09-12 |
| Repository checked | 2026-09-12 |
| Project | www.photoprism.app · photoprism/photoprism |
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