The reason I keep coming back to Google Photos after trying every major alternative

Published Oct 31, 2026, 6:30 AM EDT Jon Gilbert is a technology journalist with five years of experience covering mobile technology. He's covered smartwatches, tablets, smartphones, and Android accessories. He's attended CES to explore unique hardware like the Pebble Round 2 or Mudita Kompakt. His daily mobile tech life revolves around Pixel devices, which he has used since the Pixel 2 XL. Jon loves exploring the latest Android features, but is highly sceptical of anything related AI. Ah, Google Photos. The staple app of our Android phones. Where would we be without its seamless backup feature and comprehensive organizational tools? Probably with a third-party photo management app; that's where. In my quest to replace my Google apps, I've struggled most with Google Photos. It has the most convenient and comprehensive set of photo management features around; other apps make managing my photos a chore. Other cloud storage apps don't manage photos well Amazon Photos is close, but Google Photos is still better I first looked at Google Photos' direct competitors as replacements. I was surprised to find fewer dedicated cloud storage services for photos than I expected. The most obvious alternative is Amazon Photos. It offers unlimited full-resolution photo storage and 5GB video storage for Amazon Prime members. If you aren't a Prime member, it offers 5GB of free photo and video storage. This offer stands in stark contrast to Google Photos. Without a Google One subscription, you get 15GB of free storage, but even after subscribing to a Google One plan, the first tier caps you at 100GB. My Google Photos library takes up 70.49GB, so I have to subscribe to a Google One plan to keep using my photos with the service. This hasn't been a problem, since my loyalty to Google Pixel phones means Google regularly gives me free Google One plans. But I would rather pay for Google One than use Amazon Photos. The biggest problem with Amazon Photos is organization. With Google Photos, I can quickly filter out document scans, events, receipts, places, people, and device folders. Amazon Photos can identify people and has a useful search engine. But I still rely on Google Photos' device folder function weekly, and Amazon can't do that at all. Rather than organization, Amazon Photos emphasizes memories. It's nice to be reminded of old moments, but I would rather find the photo I'm looking for. I like having Amazon Photos on hand for storing high-resolution photos, but it can't replace Google Photos. Other cloud storage apps have bigger problems. iCloud offers something similar to Google Photos, but it's unavailable on Android. Proton Drive is overpriced and has pitiful photo management features. So what next? Self-hosted services are useful, but I can't rely on them There's always a catch A commonly touted alternative to cloud storage services like Google Photos or Amazon Photos is storing the photos on a local server. A self-hosted service like this has a few benefits. You don't have to pay a subscription fee, you have as much or as little storage as you want, and you have total control over who has access. However, you can only access the photos while the server is running. For 24/7 access to photos, you need a server running 24/7. The electricity and hardware needs alone can cost more than a Google Photos subscription. Instead, self-hosted services like Immich are better suited as a secondary backup on a regularly used PC or NAS server. Then there are the organizational and editing features. Immich, the most popular self-hosted photo storage service, has minimal photo-editing tools, and it only launched these this year. It's clunky, awkward, and feels incomplete. While self-hosting photos might suit some people, it doesn't work for me. But they are useful for browsing local photos My biggest criticism of Google Photos is feature bloat. For every feature I find useful, I ignore two. Plenty of local photo management apps on Android offer simple tools for organizing and viewing photos. Ironically, one of them is a Google app. Left: Gallery. Right: Memoria But Gallery by Google, Simple Gallery, Memoria, and all their kin are lightweight by design. I rely heavily on Google Photos' editing and organization features, which no other app can match. I keep Gallery by Google installed to browse local photos, but it can't replace Google Photos. No app can replace Google Photos for me, but I don't rely on it fully Google Photos isn't perfect. I keep Amazon Photos and Gallery installed to solve the app's biggest problems. While I could do all my photo management and editing in Google Photos, the lack of unlimited storage and the feature bloat bothers me. The best solution isn't to replace Google Photos, but to install other photo management apps alongside it. At the end of the day, Google Photos is the most comprehensive photo storage solution for Android.