Immich Hosting on Your Own VPS
A self-hosted photo library with mobile backup and search, on storage you own.
Size a server for Immich
Every stop is a real configuration you can deploy. Priced per 30 days, billed by the hour, exclusive of 18% GST.
What Immich is
Immich is a self-hosted photo and video library designed as a replacement for Google Photos. Mobile apps back up your camera roll automatically, and the server organises everything into a timeline with albums, search, face grouping and map views.
The workload has an unusual shape. Day to day it is quiet — browsing a timeline is light. But every upload triggers thumbnail generation, video transcoding and machine-learning jobs for face detection and CLIP search embeddings, and the first import of a decade of photos runs all of that at once for hours.
That first import is what to size for. A server that browses comfortably can take days to process an initial library if it is under-provisioned, and the machine-learning components are the memory-hungry part. It settles down afterwards.
Why run Immich on a VPS
Storage priced as disk, not per gigabyte of photos.
Photos stay in the region you choose, on hardware you control.
Root access to attach a larger volume when the library outgrows the plan.
Resize for the initial import, then stay at a size that suits daily use.
Immich features
Automatic mobile backup for iOS and Android
Timeline, albums and shared albums
Face grouping and recognition
Natural-language search over image content
Map view from photo location data
RAW support and video transcoding
Multi-user with per-user libraries
Recommended server
A starting point for Immich, not a hard floor — size it on the sliders.
| Memory | 8 GB — the machine-learning components are what need it |
|---|---|
| CPU | 4 vCPU; transcoding and initial import are CPU-bound |
| Storage | Size to the library, then add headroom for thumbnails and transcodes |
| Operating system | Ubuntu 22.04 LTS |
How deployment works
Immich is installed with PostgreSQL, Redis and its machine-learning service, behind TLS on your own domain. Thumbnails and transcodes consume noticeably more disk than the originals alone, so size storage above the raw library. Expect the first import to run hot for hours or days depending on library size — that is the peak, not the steady state.
What people run it for
Leaving Google Photos
The same workflow, with the library on your own disk.
Family libraries
Several users with shared albums and no per-account pricing.
Photographers
RAW files and large collections without a storage subscription.
Data residency
Personal media kept in a chosen jurisdiction.
Immich hosting questions
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Root access, your choice of size, and no container between you and the application.