Azalea vs Immich

Immich is a self-hosted photo stack. You run it on a NAS or a PC, usually in Docker, keep the box on, and point mobile apps at that API. The pitch is Google Photos at home: timeline, search, sharing inside your LAN or VPN.

Azalea is a backup client on the phone. It writes originals to storage you already have — USB, Samba, COS / OSS / S3. There is no Azalea server process to babysit. There is no official “plug in a thumb drive and Immich ingests from the handset” path; Immich expects the library to live where the server can see it.

Ops: Docker and an always-on box

Immich wants disk, RAM, and a machine that does not sleep. Updates, reverse proxies, backups of the Immich database, and GPU extras are your problem. That is the right trade if you enjoy running services.

Azalea’s failure modes are phone OS, SAF bookmarks, and your bucket bill. Unplug a USB disk and the job pauses; plug it back in and the index resumes. Nobody is patching a container so the camera roll can land on a stick.

Originals and keys

Both can keep files off Google and Apple. Immich still has an application login on your server. Azalea does not have an Azalea account; object-store keys stay in the device keychain. If the NAS is off, Immich’s mobile app has nothing to talk to. Azalea can still write USB.

USB from the phone

This is the split that shows up in immich alternative searches. Self-hosters often want “the originals are on my disk” and then discover they still need a server in the middle. Azalea writes .album/manifest.jsonl on the volume from iOS (Files folder pick) or Android (SAF). Immich can import from a folder the server mounts. It does not replace the phone-side USB writer.

Immich can look like a family library with users and albums. Azalea’s household model is “two phones, one share or one bucket,” not invites and roles. If you need a web UI for relatives who will never install the app, Immich (or iCloud / Google) fits better.

Who should stay on Immich

You already run Docker, you want ML search, you accept that the NAS must stay up. Keep Immich. You can still take an Azalea USB copy of the phone as a second original; do not treat the two indexes as one system.

You do not want a server, you want a Google Photos alternative that is just files, or you came from iCloud Optimize: read Azalea vs Google Photos and Azalea vs iCloud Photos.