Backing up photos shouldn’t mean backing up your life to Big Tech. I found a better way, and it’s called Ente. With privacy and security at the forefront of Ente Photos’ policy, you’d wonder why you haven’t made the switch from Google Photos already.
Ente Photos Promotes Privacy and Security in Photo Storage and Sharing
Privacy and data security areEnte Photos' most important features. Owned by an ex-Google developer, Ente Photos is end-to-end encrypted in every aspect to ensure all users’ privacy and security. This starkly contrasts withGoogle Photos, which might use facial recognition and metadata from your photosto sell data for ads. Ente has no access to your data, guaranteed. Your images and data are only for you.
To ensure your photos won’t be lost, damaged, or destroyed, Ente Photos uses three cloud data center backups across three European cities, including in an underground fallout shelter. Not only that, but there are also confirmation waiting times to ensure when or if you delete your images, they’re restorable for over 30 days as an option.
With Gallery Lock, you’re able to pass your phone to someone and ensure there’s no accidental swiping to images you’re not willing to share, providing physical privacy as well as digital privacy. The gallery lock puts a lock on one specific image and requires facial ID from the account holder to switch it off.
Natural Language Machine Learning Search Encrypted to Your Phone
There are innovative machine learning (ML) and AI features for searching and discovering photos with Ente Photos without requiring network connectivity. The best part is that these features run locally on your device without any data requirements from Ente. Since Ente Photos uses end-to-end encryption, it uses on-device ML features as there’s no access from Ente to your photos if using a cloud-based ML tool.
Using natural language, you can simply search for what you know you have photos of, and the ML features find them fast. Your search prompt can be as natural as a conversation, and since Ente Photos includes ML facial and location tagging, and other encrypted metadata storage, you can be as detailed as you like, down to naming people (once you’ve set their face tag with a name).
Google Photos also has AI and ML features which offer the same or similar results as Ente Photos, such as the ability to use natural language when searching or being able to tag and group people or locations together; however, Google may use your data against you. Ente Photos provides the same functions without selling, benefitting from, or even accessing you data.
Intelligent Discovery Lets You Relive Past Events
Similarly to natural language search is the Intelligent Discovery feature. Again, Google Photos has a similar feature, but with encrypted data, you know your memories are safe and for your eyes only.
Intelligent Discovery is a new feature for Ente Photos v1. It allows your best memories to appear and remind you of fun or special events of the past. This feature highlights Ente Photos’ core values of sharing memories within your image storage.
You can add a widget for your phone’s home screen to take advantage of this feature, so you don’t have to log into the app in order to see your memories come back to life.
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Sync Across All Your Platforms with Secure Encryption
Ente Photos is available on all platforms you may use. It syncs extremely well across platforms and it costs no extra to use multiple platforms. Whether you’re using Ente Photos from a phone, a computer, or managing to develop it into a Raspberry Pi project, there’s a platform for you.
You can access Ente Photos straight form the web browser, as computer software for MacOS, Windows, or Linux machines, and as a phone app for both Android and iOS devices. You can also access it via command line for your choice of development platforms.
Accounts are encrypted with two-factor authentication to ensure end-to-end encrypted syncing across all devices, and full security to ensure no one else can access your account without permission.
You Can Run Ente Photos on Your Home Server
Since Ente Photos is developed by programmers who have worked on large-scale projects, they wanted to ensure it’s accessible to other programmers or tech-savvy people to explore development further. Ente Photos v1—released in March 2025—took over 40,000 commits to get right.
Ente Photos also runs as an open-source project and offers fully open-source access. This allows tech-savvy users to run Ente Photos from their own home server with even more control over anything Ente Photos can offer.
While not everyone has the ability to run a home server—since it takes a fair amount of knowledge and experience to do, it’s not for the everyday tech user—it’s great to have the option for those who want it. Ente Photos already makes agreat private alternative to Google Photos, but with extra security from self-hosting, it offers even more to users.
If you’re unable to run your own home lab, it’s not a problem to run Ente Photos from its own hosted platform. You don’t lose any security or privacy features by doing so, you’ll just have less access and control over the features installed compared to a self-hosted version.
Keep Your Photos in Your Family with Legacy and Account Sharing
Keeping your photo memories within the family was an important value of Ente Photos’ founder, Vishnu Mohandas. For paid plans, you can access the family shared plan which allows you to invite up to five family members to share your account. The percentage of which you share your storage is up to you, but you can visualize who has which percentage of storage and ensure all your family members get to keep their photos safe together.
You can also easily share or collaborate with other Ente Photos if you need to share photos with someone else. Add viewers or collaborators or simply generate a sharing link to send out to people. This feature is great for photo albums of specific events like parties or get-togethers. You can also generate a collection link so others can upload photos to the same event grouping.
Legacy accounts are another great way to let your family photos stay within the family. In a digital world, we no longer leave behind physical photo albums for our descendants to flip through years after our passing, and it can be much more difficult to keep our photographic memories around for others to continue sharing.
With Ente Photos Legacy Accounts, you can assign a trusted person—who will have to confirm their decision to do so—to become the account holder upon death, letting your photos live on. There’s a stringent process to setting up a Legacy account which confirms who the chosen person will be and how it makes the switch upon your death.
Great Options for Free and Affordable Photo Storage Plans
Though Ente Photos is open-source, it does have paid account options. All users can receive 10 GB of free storage. The free version doesn’t come with album sharing, nor the family plan sharing; however, you still have access to on-device AI search, Intelligent Discovery, automatic backups of your images, community support, and one replica.
The paid from are from $2.49 per month for 50 GB which includes 3 replicas, album sharing, and the family plan. Further paid plans include the same features but with high storage amounts, including 200 GB for $4.99 per month, 1000 GB for $9.99 per month, and 2000 GB for $19.99 per month. Any paid plan users can gain 10 GB free using the referral plan, if referring a new paid user.
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Ente Photos Makes Storage Feel Secure and Trustworthy
Although the pricing of Ente Photos is slightly higher than Google Photos, its impact and mission statement show more promise. It feels like trusting a friend when storing my photo memories on Ente Photos. Data encryption is of the utmost importance in this service, alongside the desire to store precious family memories in a safe and accessible way.
With easy setup and access from multiple platforms and consistent new features—including upcoming features within video streaming, new gallery layouts, memory sharing feed, and a local-first version with no account requirements—Ente Photos feels like the most progressive photo-sharing service to use that I can relax about my security with.
