head to head · open source
Immich vs restic
Immich has 116,033 GitHub stars, 7,190 forks, 740 open issues and last shipped yesterday. restic has 36,523 stars, 1,918 forks, 622 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Immich leads on adoption by 218% (116,033 vs 36,523 stars). Immich is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; restic is written in Go under BSD-2-Clause. Immich has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, restic 5%. 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 | restic | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 116K | ★ 37K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-11 | 2026-10-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.2K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Immich if
- You weight community size — 116K 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 restic if
- You want the restic feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and restic 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 restic
restic is a fast, secure, efficient backup program written in Go for Linux, macOS, Windows, FreeBSD and OpenBSD users who want verifiable, encrypted backups stored to a backend of their choosing.
read the full restic overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Immich or restic more popular?
Immich has 116,033 GitHub stars and restic has 36,523. Immich has the larger community by that measure.
Are Immich and restic free?
Both are open source. Immich is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and restic under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Immich and restic?
Immich is written in TypeScript and restic 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 restic?
Choose Immich if you want the larger community (116,033 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose restic if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.