E
- Category
- Photos · SaaS alternative
- Cost
- Freemium
- Country
- India
- Licensing
- FOSS
- Self-hostable
- Yes
# PROS AND CONS
+ what works
- +Strong client-side encryption covering files and metadata, audited by Cure53
- +Clients and server (museum) are AGPLv3 and developed in a single public monorepo
- +10 GB free tier and a family plan that shares one subscription across six accounts
- +Companion Ente Auth app provides free, encrypted, cross-platform 2FA storage
− watch out for
- −Indian jurisdiction is less battle-tested for privacy than the EU or Switzerland
- −Self-hosting the server is supported but treated as power-user territory, not a turnkey product
- −On-device ML features (face and object search) require initial indexing compute on the client
- −No PGP or open photo-sync protocol; you are tied to Ente's apps
# PRIVACY NOTES
Photos, videos, filenames, EXIF metadata, location tags, and on-device ML indexes are encrypted client-side using libsodium (XChaCha20, Poly1305, Argon2id) before upload, so Ente cannot read file contents or metadata. Encrypted blobs are replicated across three EU providers in Amsterdam, Paris, and Frankfurt. The operating company, Ente Technologies, is based in Bengaluru, India, and is therefore subject to Indian legal process for any data it does hold (account email, billing, encrypted ciphertext).
# REPLACES
google-photosicloud-photos
# TAGS
#e2ee · #photos · #foss · #agplv3 · #self-hostable · #2fa
# DOES THIS WORK FOR YOU
# NOTES FROM PEOPLE WHO TRIED IT
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