head to head · open source
Immich vs Plakar
Immich has 114,457 GitHub stars, 6,980 forks, 740 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Plakar has 2,062 stars, 92 forks, 123 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Immich leads on adoption by 5,451% (114,457 vs 2,062 stars). Immich is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Plakar is written in Go under ISC. Immich has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, Plakar 4%. Immich was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Immich | Plakar | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 114K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | ISC |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.0K | ⑂ 92 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Immich if
- You weight community size — 114K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Plakar if
- You want the Plakar feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the ISC license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Plakar fits your workflow better
About Immich
Immich is a high performance self hosted photo and video management solution — an AGPL 3.0 TypeScript project — for people and households who want their photo library on a server they own rather than in Google Photos.
read the full Immich overview →
About Plakar
Plakar is an open source backup engine written in Go for the infrastructure and operations ecosystem. It is powered by Kloset, an immutable data store, and it uses the ptar format for self contained archives. Plakar creates snapshots of data, stores them in encrypted and deduplicated repositories, and lets users inspect, verify, and restore the snapshots later.
read the full Plakar overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Immich or Plakar more popular?
Immich has 114,457 GitHub stars and Plakar has 2,062. Immich has the larger community by that measure.
Are Immich and Plakar free?
Both are open source. Immich is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Plakar under ISC. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Immich and Plakar?
Immich is written in TypeScript and Plakar in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Immich or Plakar?
Choose Immich if you want the larger community (114,457 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Plakar if its feature set, stack or ISC licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.